What does everyone use to clean pitch from Sawblades router bits etc? I am using some recovered longleaf pine and the resin is building up rapidly. Tryed pitch cleaner from Rockler and a brass brush …… useless. Any homemade cleaners out there?
Thanks
Dana
GO SOX!!!!
Replies
Stick with stuff you already have on hand. Simple Green works. I've used kerosene on our bandmill blades and it works. For less smell there's bio-diesel. Your blades will smell like French Fires. Mineral spirits and the old favorite lacquer thinner does work but don't get it on your skin or inhale the fumes. Long from the days of silk screening in 6th grade and sloshing the old lacquer thinner around.
There's another thread here somehwere about just that, and several in the archives. I'm in the Simple Green cadre. With a pizza pan, a toothbrush, and a bit of SG, you'll get things clean super-easy. The ease encourages frequent cleaning, which makes it even easier! Once the blade's clean, a 5 minute soaking before the pitch gets bad will do the trick
"I am using some recovered longleaf pine and the resin is building up rapidly. Tryed pitch cleaner from Rockler and a brass brush ...... useless" Re-read your post just now. I'm guessing you're waiting way too long to clean if the pitch cleaner and brass brush are "useless." To get the first cleaning done, you could resort to the overnight kerosene soaking approach (yuck, IMHO). After that, clean them before the pitch gets baked on from the heat of cutting!
Don't mean to sound "ungreen" but I save a bunch of lacquer thinner from all of the automotive painting and lacquer painting I do. You can keep a 5 gallon jug of used thinner around and strain it to get the big stuff out.
Soaking a 10" or 12" blade overnight will losen just about anything. Find a tray and use only a 1/2" of lacquer.
Lacquer thinner is far more aggressive than kerosene. Try not to get it on your hands.
Just a tip: before I use the cleaning lacquer, I always rub some mineral oil all over my hands. Good stuff. Helps the skin and protects you from splash drops too. gloves go on easier too.
good luck it ain't that big a deal. I live in the land of long leaf pine and I am into the stuff more than I can mention. I like poplar but the yellow pine is so plentiful its hard to avoid.
Why would you use something that you should "try not to get...on your hands," of which vapors smell to high heaven and do bad things to your blood and brain cells, when you could use a household cleaner, soak for 5 minutes, and accomplish what you need to do????
Sorry, this makes no sense to me.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Dana,
I have cut a great deal of pitch pine and other sticky woods on my TS, with the associated gumming-up you mention. Like The Girl, I am wary of heavy-duty cleaning chemicals, which will damage your person and also other folk; not to mention the nice plants and creatures in your n o' th' w. (As you may have realised, some of the wilder Knots personas may have got that way by messing with petro chemicals or them glues that bad lads sniff down the alleyway, when they be bored).
After some trials with this and that cleaner, I now use only the CMT orange cleaner, which is made mostly from the oil in their citrusy skins. All pitch sucumbs to the stuff, which also smells reet good and will not make you go doo-wally, even were you to drink it or put it in the jacuzzi (there's a thought - not the drinking, the bathing).
I put the blade, router bit or whatever is gummed up onto a piece of old cardboard then spray the CMT orange stuff on to its teeth or cutters. (The CMT comes in a hand-pumped spray bottle). The teeth get a good soak; I am generous with the trigger.
After 5 to 10 minutes the blade can have the softened goo brushed off. As the blade has teeth, I use a toothbrush of the discarded type - although you could probably use your current one with no bad effects on your own teeth later on, at bedtime, if you have cleaned the CMT liquid off it agin. Oranges soften teeth enamel, so never eat one- or a lemon - just before the bedtime ablutions. (As though you would).
It is rare for even the gummiest blade to need more than one soak/brushup of the CMT stuff. But you can do it agin with a spot of the orange here and there, if there is a gum speck or three clinging tenaciously in the crevices. (The teeth faces are often the trickiest to get the brush on).
One must not leave the CMT to dry, as this will leave the gum softer but still stuck to the teeth.
After the wash and brush-up, the residue of murky pitch and orange juice can be rinsed off under the hot tap, with the aid of a bit of washing up liquid if you like. (I leave out the washing up liquid as the CMT then leaves a slightly protective finish - a very thin coat of citrus oil).
Then make sure the blade is dried off and perhaps stood on a central heating radiator or other warm spot for a few minutes, to evaporate any water droplets lurking in the depths awaiting the chance to rust something.
Them teeth will shine and your blade wil be all smiley, so that it will happily cut the timber once more.
Lataxe, dental hygenist.
Lots and lots of methods seem to work. Citrus cleaners like Goo Gone and Goof Off work great. I've also had good success with many degreaser sprays like 409, Totally Awesome, Greased Lightning, Simple Green. Dawn dishwashing soap and water work well too. I've tried Boeshield's "BladenBit" cleaner...it worked well too, but was no better than the $1-$3 items already mentioned.
Electrolysis is said to work too, as is TSP/water, as well as baking soda/water.
Two things seem obvious to me. Something you already have in your house should work well. Keeping up with it makes nearly anything work well.
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