Home degreaser?

Dawn does pretty well on grease and oil. My dishpan still has stains from cleaning the truck's differential cover with it.

In dry weather Dawn makes the skin on my hands crack while Dial doesn't, so I have two soap dispensers in the kitchen and bath.

-jsw

How greasy makes a difference. Really greasy I'd first use paint thinner (better than kerosene): fasteners & thinner in a gallon can with lid and shake it. And how clean? Thinner might be enough. REALLY clean with lye (why not) - I keep a gallon mixed up & use it for a variety of cleaning. Not as clean: hot TSP or Dawn in can & shake.

TSP might work, use the hottest water you can though.

I degrease stuff with plain old 409 or Fantastik. Use long gloves, no matter they claim, the stuff is bad for you and is absorbed through skin real fast.

Final rinse is lots of hot water, so things dry before they rust.

Greasy as in new fasteners in a box from China, with whatever the hell kind of goop they put on them. I'd prefer to not be using solvents.

Jon

I'm thinking I'll need something a little stronger than just a detergent, ideally something that I can just dip/swish with a basket, instead of hand washing each part, but I might give it a go just for fun.

Jon

Yeah, I use gloves for everything, even for washing dishes, or should I say, especially for washing dishes.

Jon

You'd better cough, boy! I picked up a gallon of purple degreaser and love it in the shop. I've used it in place of Easy Wash in the laundry a time or two, too, and it performed well.

TSP is still sold (HD, paint stores, etc.) and still works well.

I have heard that from beaucoup people so I tried it, both in the sink and in the shop. After trying it in numerous different ways, I hated Dawn for either space. My Palmolive dish soap works better than it does, plus it smells a whole lot better. I think the original story for Dawn may have gone something like this: "I used boiling water and Dawn detergent. It works much better than my old detergent in cold water with ice cubes."

Well, you know how easy Libs are to fool...

Try the green Palmolive. Good stuff, Maynard.

I used to have cracks form in the finger meat at the ends of my nails. They'd split right past the nail on the top of the fingertip. Hurt like hell. I got some O'Keefe's Working Hands lotion and it helped keep them moisturized enough to heal. After that I realized that I had too little oil in my diet, so I added coconut oil. About a tablespoon a day (melted in a cup of tea) keeps my skin from getting flaky and my fingertips from cracking, so I hardly need the O'Keefe's any more.

An industrial chemist taught me to economize on solvent by dipping the parts in three numbered cans sequentially. When the first became too dirty it was poured out, the second poured into the first, the third into the second, and the third refilled with clean solvent. Let the solvent mostly drain off the parts before moving them to the next can.

For reference:

OilEater will even eat asphalt yet leave metal, cotton, plastic untouched. I love it. It is avail at Costco and Walmart. Art

Hmm, I was ready to say put them in a metal strainer and agitate them in acetone, Then put them in the dishwasher, with the best grease cutting dishwasher soap you can find with google. So skip the first step and be sure to use hot water.

How quickly will rust start?

Mikek

You are supposedly a schoo-trained car mechanic. Honestly, I don't see why you haven't just recommended engine degreaser.

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Another way which works nicely is a vapor dgreaser.

Start with a container of your favorite solvent (I used 1,1,1 Trichlor(ethlyene/ethane?) back when), with heat under it to boil it.

Put into the top of the container is a double-walled cylinder with fittings so cold water can circulate through it (to condense the solvent vapor and drip it back into the container.

THe parts to be degreased are put in a wire basket which is lowered into the vapor cloud, and the solvent vapor condenses on the parts, carries off any grease or oils, and drips back into the container. Eventually, the parts get too warm to condense the solvent, so you pull it out and put in the next batch.

You cover the top with a big Petri dish to keep the vapor out of your workspace.

Hmm ... the ones on eBay are much larger and *much* more expensive. :-) But you should be able to make one from my description above for not too much money.

Enjoy, DoN.

Interesting idea Don, no matter how dirty the solvent gets, the stuff that condenses on the parts is still clean.

Jon

I've used an ultrasonic tub, filled with water and a few tablespoons of waterless hand cleaner.

In my ultrasonic I use simple green and when I get something bad as a dude, I get out the industrial floor degreaser I got at Sams - think Wallmart also. It will work like tsp. I got off 1/4" think gunky and hard Cozumel from some tools. I had to toss the tank contents and clean out the tank again. Tool was bright. Tank thought it cooked a Raccoon in it.

Mart> >> I have a bucket of fasteners that I need to degrease, which may possibly

I used to have in my shop, the all-time nastiest degreaser. It was a 5-gall on bucket 1/2 full of methylene chloride (like in paint stripper), with alm ost 1/2 a bucket of water floating on top, and a thin layer of oil on top o f that, to keep the water from evaporating.

You could dip the dirtiest, greasy-est, ugliest stuff in it, and it would c ome out so clean that surface rust would begin almost immediately.

I go this at a local auto parts store, it was sold as carb cleaner. I disp osed of it (after years of use) at a hazardous waste disposal "event." I wa s pretty nervous driving there with the covered but unsealed bucket in my t runk.

Nasty stuff, that was, but it sure did get parts clean.

In the past (25+ years ago), I had some "as seen on TV" stuff called "Citru s Miracle." This was an orange oil based stuff, you could dilute it like 10

0:1 and use it as a general purpose cleaner. Undiluted, it was formidable. It would clean flux off circuit boards better than anything else I've used, short of a vapor degreaser. Of course, the company that sold it disappeare d before I could get more, and I've never seen anything quite like it since . It was way more concentrated and more viscous than stuff I see in stores. I'd love to get some more of that, if anyone knows where to look.

I put plain water in the ultrasonic cleaner tank, and the dirty stuff and whatever solvent or soap solution in a plastic cup or bowl (margarine or cool whip tub) and put that in the tank. Back when I was working in a lab we just used glass beakers, they worked great, but somehow I don't have any of them floating around my house :-). I may lose a bit of cleaning power at the interface but I just rinse the bowl or cup and if it is still dirty I toss it and start another, so tank cleanup is a breeze. Makes it much more convenient when cleaning small screws and nuts or other tiny bits, just use a very small cup. Cuts down the volume of cleaning solvent needed, and I can do tall stuff by cutting the top off of a shampoo or dishwashing detergent bottle and standing my long part up in that so it's fully submerged. Never needed to do a pistol barrel, but that's how I will if and when :-). Hmm, just thought of something - wonder if you could put parts and soapy water in a Ziploc bag and put that in the tank, instead of a rigid bowl? Wonder how well that would work. Wouldn't try it with organic solvents, but water based stuff should be ok. Have to try that sometime; should cut the solvent volume down for long skinny parts compared to a round bowl. Anyway, just some suggestions.

In my ultrasonic I use simple green and when I get something bad as a dude, I get out the industrial floor degreaser I got at Sams - think Wallmart also. It will work like tsp. I got off 1/4" think gunky and hard Cozumel from some tools. I had to toss the tank contents and clean out the tank again. Tool was bright. Tank thought it cooked a Raccoon in it.

Mart> >> I have a bucket of fasteners that I need to degrease, which may possibly