Please help! How to remove roof felt adhesive from good trousers?!

[Anonymouse27]

No good deed goes unpunished!

I bought my teen son some expensive outdoor trousers for his hobby. They are light coloured.

He kindly went to help a relative with some DIY has ended up with black stains from roof felt adhesive on them.

I am soaking them. Washing up liquid doesn't work.

Please help me with what to use to remove/minimise the stain.

TiA

I feel like all the wisdom is on my Mumsnet and am hopeful someone will know the answer :-)

Acetone might work, but may also damage the fabric. Do you have a dry cleaner locally to check if they can do anything?

This is a very good lesson for your teen about protecting his clothing. Does the hobby really require the trousers to be pristine?

There is a product called sticky stuff remover but I think it may work better on hard surfaces.

Dr Beckmanns Stain Devils do one for industrial oils and stains. I always swear by Swarfega (the green one, not the one with bits)

No, they don't need to pristine for the hobby and that is what he said. However, I would still prefer to remove the stain if I can!

I’ve used WD40 to remove oil from DH’s clothes and it can be used for adhesives as well. You apply the WD40 on the inside of the garment, under the substance that you want to remove, quite liberally, and leave it to break down the stain. Wipe off the hopefully detached glue and grot on the outside, then a good application of washing up liquid to remove the greasy WD40 residue. Then wash in the machine. I’ve done this on chino type pink shorts and it left no stain at all….you might want to try a wee patch test first…I haven’t tried it on technical fabrics.

I was going to suggest WD40 too. The website mentions many uses for it including roofing tar stains so it's definitely worth trying on adhesive.

www.wd40.com/useArticle/unusual-uses-wd40/