tablesaw, crosscut mitre saw blades cleaning

allen levine

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new york city burbs
I have a few old blades I only use to cut scraps, but last week I cleaned the gunk out of the sharp edges carefully, and they seem to be working much better, I actually cut white oak yesterday with a very used old blade and noticed no burn marks at all. 4o tooth combo blade. I used bug and tar remover, the blades were just coated with guck from pressure treated, ipe, and it seems it all cleaned out nicely. The bug and tar stuff is what I use on my car..

Can I use some kind of chemical cleaner on my blades that have coatings on them?
The red ones from freud, the freud avanti has some other kind of coating.
Will a little gasoline or bug and tar remover damage the blade or its integrity?

I really never thought a clean blade would make a big difference, but I believe it improved things a bit, and I want to clean all my blades, they are all very well used.

does freud or one of the other blade companies make cleaners?
 
I have found Simple Green to be an effective blade cleaner and cheaper than the dedicated products. Get an oil drain pan from your local auto parts store and soak the blades in the cleaner. You can use a tooth brush or other nylon bristle brush to scrub off the pitch that doesn't come off the blades. You can also use it on router bits, jointer/planer knives and shaper cutters. If you are going to use this as your dedicated blade cleaner you can pour the used Simple Green back into the jug to reuse.

A funny story about the product - when the Air Force was looking for a biodegradable/non-toxic cleaner, the president of Simple Green took his product to them, showed them what a great job it did and then added a finale to his demonstration. He took some swigs from the bottle and finished off his spiel. Now technically he knew it was non-toxic, when it was all over he got to a phone and called his technical team to ask if he should check himself into a hospital. They told to get back to his hotel as he was about to have a memorable evening sitting out his bravado on the toilet. He made the sale.

Cheers.
 
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From the rooter to the tooter. :p

...oh that's priceless! "Chuckle of the day" for sure! :rofl:

Seriously, like Rennie, I've had good luck with 409 too. Plus, LA's Totally Awesome, Greased Lightning, Goo Gone, Simple Green, Fantastic, etc...I just grab whatever degreasing cleaner is in the closet, spray it on, hit with my wife's toothbrush (;)), and rinse!
 
I had to move 80 bf of wood to get to the simple green behind it.
I took out my freud red blade, the glue line ripper I bought, and ofcourse, I dropped the blade, so that was enough cleaning for me today.
 
Dan,

Where in the heck did you come up with that story...I'm still laughing.

I am not sure it is true but...In days of history the Borgias were the king pin bankers. I have heard that they became the big guys because they killed off the competition with extracts of the belladonna plant.

Now in this same era, the gals thought it was sexy to have large (bedroom eyes) pupils. The ladies found that a diluted extract from that plant dropped on the eyes dilated their pupils.

So the story goes that if you are a rich banker and get invited to the Borgia's for dinner: After the meal you leave and you have servants outside of the gates to the mansion. The servants have some cats. You pee in the cat's eyes. If the pupils dilate you go home and take the anedote for belladonna poisoning...and live happily until the next invitation.

Man, what a line of stuff. Enjoy,

Jim

By the way belladonna is still used in the eyecare field.
 
I heard the Simple Green sales story many years ago so I thought I would research it just to be sure I wasn't off the deep end. I was pretty close.

The story can be found on their UK web site from an article in the Orange County Register, Dec. 30, 1997 - http://www.simplegreen.co.uk/press_ausgabe.php-id=108.htm

Here are the pertinent lines about Bruce FaBrizio, president of Simple Green-

FaBrizio was like a vacuum-cleaner salesman. In 1984, he took his cleaner to Edwards Air Force Base to show NASA how well his industrial formula cleaner could clean airplanes. They brought out a filthy fighter that had been in the desert for two years.

As NASA technicians watched, FaBrizio swiped dirt off the wing and licked the cleaned spot. He then swallowed a bottle of cleaner to prove it wasn't toxic.

Swallowing Simple Green was the only way he could promote his relatively unknown product and prove it wouldn't kill. It became his trademark.

The stuff didn't kill FaBrizio. It did, however, give him "the worst case of diarrhea you could imagine," he says.

Simple Green is now used on Navy ships, at Disneyland, by the General Services Administration buildings and in the aerospace industry. It's sold in grocery stores, in drug stores and at trade shows, and you can find information on the Web (www.simplegreen.com).


And no I am not affiliated with the product, just a consumer and a person that appreciates a good story.
 
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I've had pine sap build up on a couple of my blades, I grabbed the closest thing to me ... WD40. Leave the blade attached, give a good coat of WD40, make a quick cut on a piece of soft scrap and the blade is sparkling clean.
 
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