If your ground glass is made from single piece of matted glass, without anything plasticky, and the grid is silk-screen printed on its shiny side, why not acetone? Don't only take too much on a cotton swab, so the dissolved paint wouldn't hit the matted surface.
Plain water seems to work very well, at least rain has on 2 of my cameras.
The lines will probably wash of with detergent & water. I had a GG screen in an old Graphic back and it seems the lines were some kind of wax, they wash of very easily. A bit of rain got at my Wista screen and some black lines shifted, not enough to ruin the scree but enough to show they'd be easy to remove.
Glass is quite durable so it should be extremely easy to remove the screen with water or a solvent.
I'm going to try this. My shenhao has crooked grid lines which always screws up my horizons. No matter how hard I try, I can't uncouple my brain from the (slightly off) gridlines and I end up getting it wrong.
Walter--is the glass just crooked in the frame? It might just need to be adjusted a bit. I like gridlines myself, and usually just draw them in with a pencil and a ruler on the matte side of the glass.
To answer the original question, I'd buy a non-gridded screen and save the gridded one against the time when you realize that it may have its uses after all. Grid-free screens ooze aesthetic charm; once you learm to disregard the grid, except when you need it, I'd back gridded every time. But I've only been using LF since the early 70s, so I could be wrong.
A good comment not to be lost in my rather crude cleaning of this thread...
I've removed some off topic banter, since it was getting heated, the thread was reported and the original topic has value. If you are interested in discussing what Americans know and buy there is a new thread in the lounge...
Thanks all, it worked well. There are still marks on the glass, bright lines, where the grid lines were. Is there a good way of eliminating those, short of re-grinding? Thanks,
Thanks all, it worked well. There are still marks on the glass, bright lines, where the grid lines were. Is there a good way of eliminating those, short of re-grinding? Thanks,