Turns out my fears of abrading the glass were unfounded. It was simply leftover residue from the anti-glare coating.

I ended up using more of the plastic polishing compound and was able to get the vast majority of it off. It's at a point where there is almost no residue left. In use, the monitor has a very clear image.

The screen is much brighter and has a more even image than when only part of the coating was missing.

which plastic polish did you go with?

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-03-21, 02:41:

which plastic polish did you go with?

It's this NOVUS Plastic Polish I got from Amazon.

I originally got it for restoring old plastics (e.g. polishing clear acrylic). Turns out it also works decently at stripping anti-glare coating.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-20, 19:38:

Has anyone used any polishes on CRT glass? Any tips or advice?

Never did it myself but I did see some YT videos about fixing old CRTs (TV and monitors) and some had badly scratched fronts (dump finds I guess) and had to be made more presentable somehow, so polishing was involved. Though I guess now that you are finished it's a bit of a moot point? But I wanted to ask why did you remove the coating on your monitor - weak, dark CRT, or scratches? I know removing it will improve the contrast and sharpnes a bit (so long the CRT is not so weak that the automatic white balance screws up focusing) but I find daylight glare way more annoying than anything else.

Deunan wrote on 2023-03-21, 11:00:

But I wanted to ask why did you remove the coating on your monitor - weak, dark CRT, or scratches?

Scratches. About 10% of the original coating was already scratched off. You can kind of see it a bit in the before pic along the top. Unfortunately I hadn't taken a better "before" pic to show the extent of the damage to the coating.

Using the monitor with it scratched up resulted in a splotchy and highly distracting looking image.

With the coating gone, glare is definitely an issue. But overall I find it the better option versus the scratched up coating.

I have been considering something like that on my Sony and Samsung trinitron screens. Coating scratches are annoying. But you don't see them while using the monitor. Reflective screen could be even more annoying. So I haven't done anything about it.

It's not worth doing if the scratches are small or thin enough to not be noticed in normal use.

I find larger patches (i.e. 1cm or more diameter ) is when it starts to become a visible distraction.