How do you de-yuck sticky rexlace or gimp?

Answer 1

If you spilled something on it, just wash with a little soapy water, then rinse & dry.

However, sometimes Rexlace (and maybe other brands) will become sticky with age. This sticky stuff gets on your hands and anything else it touches, and many ordinary bar soaps will not wash away the stickiness. What is it and why does it happen? I have no idea!

However, I've found that you can clean off the sticky stuff using a cloth dipped in rubbing alcohol (90%) however, it's not easy to clean the stickiness out of all of the nooks & crannies in a braided keychain.

I'm a teacher who has used plastic lacing in the classroom for many years, and I've had this happen to my Rexlace... but with ONLY two rolls of lacing: clear with gold glitter, and a striped lace in clear, translucent blue, and white. The stored rolls got sticky as well as the keychains which were made of pieces cut from those same rolls. Those two rolls were probably about 5-10 years old when they got sticky. The strange thing is, out of all of the colors I've purchased through the years, only those two colors became sticky, and I have LOTS of keychains made from Rexlace- some made 20 years ago- and the laces in the other colors are still just fine.

Anyhow, I threw out my few rolls of sticky, unused lacing since I have other colors and it's inexpensive to replace- but cleaned the few keychains which were made from it to keep in my collection of finished stitch samples.