How to remove dark marks from Proofgrade plywood

My latest order of Proofgrade materials includes a piece of maple plywood that has a couple of vertical dark marks near one corner. I thought maybe it was just dirt so I tried wiping it with a cloth, but the marks won’t come off. Does anyone know how to get rid of these marks?

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Is it proofgrade? If so, you can probably ask for a credit for the sheet, it’s guaranteed.

Other than that… if it’s not finished I’d try sanding it off.

If it’s finished, I might try light solvents, gradually increasing strength. Start with water, then maybe something likely soapy, then on to alcohols, etc. The idea is to approach it as gently as possible that will get the marks off… you don’t want to damage the finish.

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Maybe milling marks? If they are underneath the finish you won’t be able to remove them easily, but those look pretty close to the edge…you might be able to just stick those into the upper left corner of the machine bed and use the rest of the sheet without losing anything.

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Thanks. I’ll give those solvents a try. It is Proofgrade, so if I can’t get the marks off, I’ll ask for a credit. Thanks for the suggestion. I didn’t know that I could do that.

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That’s a great idea and what I should have done! I wanted to engrave and cut two designs out of this piece of plywood. I thought I had enough room to avoid the marked portion. I started on the unmarked half and had to move the design farther to the right than I expected because I forgot that I couldn’t cut near the left edge. Now the second design overlaps the marks. The second design is smaller and if I had done what you suggested, I would have been able to cut both and avoid that area entirely. Oh well, live and learn. (Sorry for the delay in replying. I lost my connection with glowforge.com yesterday evening and kept getting a server not responding error.)

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