I made a bathroom counter backsplash with a couple pieces of cherry, into which I routed recesses for hand-made transparent or semi-transparent pieces of art glass made of recycled glass. I painted the bottoms of the recesses white, and then set the glass in clear silicone sealer, and finally filled in around the glass pieces with grout. It looked great when I finished it, just the visual effect I was after, ... but ...
The backs of the glass pieces are irregular. What happened after the silicone cured was that in the deeper recesses on the back of the glass the silicone turned sort of brown, and no longer presents a nice white background. So I'm going to cut the whole works up and grind the grout off the glass pieces and start the whole project over.
What I need to do is get the silicone sealer off the backs of the glass pieces, particularly down in the recesses. What I'd like to do is find some process that will let me get the silicone sealer off with a minimum amount of work, and the minimum amount of damage to the glass (I intend to re-use the glass). What does the wisdom of the wreck offer to ease this task?
I'm thinking heat, maybe, or some chemical treatment that will soften the silicone sealer so that it doesn't hang on like grim death and require picking it out of the back of the glass with dental picks. But I don't know what it would respond to, if anything. So help me out here, folks.
Too late, by the way, to beat me up by telling me that I never should have done it this way. I've already figured that part out. And my politics didn't have anything to do with it either.
Thanks for any help you would like to offer.
Tom