How To Disappear Completely

a little experiment in household chemistry

Due to an incident involving nail polish remover, one of my dining room chairs has featured a silver dollar size patch of missing varnish. Laura was able to track down some paint at an artist's shop close to where she works, so today I decided to cover up that bald spot with a little paint job. However, the only tool I had was a brush swiped from a $3 water color set (you know, the kind you used when you were 8). And the paint was oil based, meaning that if I tried to clean it off with water, the whole thing would turn into a gooey sticky mess. Normally, I would turn to my dad's gallons of turpentine to solve this problem, but since that option was about 1500 miles away, I decided to see what normal rubbing alcohol would do. After all, they both stink and are obviously not water, so the two substances must have similar chemical properties, right?

Well, despite my less-than-scientific deductions, the rubbing alcohol worked like a charm. Score.