I just found a new way to clean the shipping cosmoline off of a new machine that works so well i have to share it with somebody.
i just bought a new planer that came with about 1/8″ of thick heavy cosmoline built-up on the deck and wings to protect them during shipping.
being very impatient to test my new tools heavy stock feeding abilities i decided to just check the blades and do a test cut in some heavy pine timbers.
it sucked it right through even over the cosmoline with power to spare, and since i didn’t have my dust collector connected either i ended up with a big pile of thick pine planer shavings all over the place.
thrilled that the planer worked so well, and disapointed in myself for not having enough self restraint to properly prepare my machine before use, i settled in to the task of cleaning up my mess so i could begin the process of scraping away the excess cosmoline with a plastic scraper and cleaning the remnants off with solvent. a process i have done many times and hate more each time i do it.
i figured while i was sweeping off the planer shavings i would use a hand full of them to wipe off some of the thicker areas of cosmoline.
It worked great, unbeleivably great…a handfull of planer shavings with light pressure in a circular scrubbing motion completely stripped off all of the shipping protectant with very little effort.
I grabbed another hand full and finished cleaning every last spot of it off in less than 5 minutes.
All of the edges of the shavings cut throught he cosmoline and lift it right off…the shavings absorb the grease in the cosmoline so there is no pile of greasy crap left on the floor…there is no chemical mess or smell to deal with…
i just kept grabbing handfulls of shavings and rubbing them over the tool until they were scattered everywhere or covered with shipping grease and then i would grab another handfull.
I sucked the whole mess up with the shop vac when i was finished.
I t was the easiest thing i have ever done to clean cosmoline off of a new tool, i can’t believe i have never heard of someone doing this before…i did the same thing on a buddies new shaper about a week later and it worked equally as well…
I think you need to use planer of jointer shavings, something large and chip like, i doubt finer dust would work as well…
has anybody else ever tried doing this?
Replies
A roll of papertowels and denatured alcohol (won't hurt the 'lectrics) has always worked for me...
Never was a big fan of petroleum based solvents around motors and switches.
If the cosmo is really thick we used to put a piece of masking tape across the blade of a flexible scraper and just scrape it off the flat surfaces then do the paper towels and DN alcohol.
Holz-Her equipment used to come with the crap on a half-inch thick in places.
Edited 6/2/2006 10:17 am ET by BossCrunk
I used it when I got my first planer. It's actually a technique from when I used to re-finish furniture. It's an easy, clean way to soak up and remove stipper that is still left on a peice and remove quite a bit of the stripped finish.
It's still a pretty good idea to go over the whole unit with alcohol or acetone and then re-lubricate it.
Magnus
"Remember, a bad carpenter always blames his tools" -Joe Conti-
Save all future shavings.You can bag them and sell them for cosmoline cleaner.Glad you found an easy way to get rid of that stuff.
mike
That's a great idea cscwem! I'm with you on what a pain it is to scrape and use solvents.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
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