Diasfora
General Category => Chaos => Topic started by: 8ullfrog on February 02, 2014, 01:22:22 AM
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Right now my Leatherman is soaking in vinegar because roommate borrowed it and did not clean it. Needless to say, it grew rust.
I'm not really the best on maintenance, so I'll ask. How do you keep your tools in usable shape? I learned recently not to use blades to clean things, as it scars and naffs up the thing you are trying to clean.
Thankfully I had quite a few T-shirts ready to die, so I cut them up into strips. I've been using them to wipe things down, and that works better than scraping poo out with my pocket knife.
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Clean them after you use them. Dry them if they are wet. Clean them if dirty. Keep them oiled.
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As a tradesman I maintain my tools once a week, usually on a Friday.
That involves cleaning, sharpening, oiling and putting back in their protective sheaths etc.
If you don't have a routine like I do, you should just do the above after you have completed what you are doing.
Personally I like the scraping approach to cleaning things, but the tool you use must be razor sharp with no dinks that will scratch the surface.
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One of the reasons I'm using Vinegar as opposed to WD-40 is that I hear it can gunk tools up and permanently golly them up. Do you have a particular oil of preference?
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vinegar is a mild acid and it's dissolved in water.
It can corrode metal, so I'm not sure it's the best solution.
To sharpen chisels we use mineral oil and a whetstone, wipe them clean and store them until the next use. They've never gunked up, but as for WD(water displacement) 40? There are all kinds of substances that help make it an aerosol and that are intended for hard to reach areas. I'm not so sure it's a great solution for lubricating and maintaining metal tools.
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3-in-1 oil. Just a few drops goes a long way. It's a light (thin) oil and seeps into and soaks those out-of-sight rusty places.
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I don't know if anyone has mentioned, but with some of the iron I have, I put silicon gel packets with it.
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One of the reasons I'm using Vinegar as opposed to WD-40 is that I hear it can gunk tools up and permanently golly them up. Do you have a particular oil of preference?
Ballistol FTW
EVOO.
... but I don't use tools.
I would imagine they wouldn't rust if you did.
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I had to look up Ballistol. It's a mineral oil based lubricant. Ballistic Oil.
Wikipedia is great for giving info about such substances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistol)
Then I started wondering about "mineral oil" wtf? So here: it's basically rotten dinosaurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil)