Many woodworkers including myself and others I know tend to use commercial grade cleaner to remove the pitch on our saw blades. This works fine and dandy. It takes the gunk off of the blade and brings it back to its shiny original self.

However, if you look at the main ingredient in a lot of these products, it tends to be sodium hydroxide. I don’t know if you know anything about chemistry, but it is a caustic element. It can cause severe respiratory problems, nausea, dizziness etc. It is basically like inhaling paint fumes that kids use to get high. Since I picked up woodworking4home I have been tinkering with many old ways of woodworking. It has opened my eyes a lot such as cleaning my blades.

But with a little experimentation, there are many other items that can be found in your house hold appliances that will do the exact same job as these rancid, caustic, potentially harming products.

One such item is acetone. Acetone is alcahol in nature and found in nail polish remover. It is also a caustic agent with some fumes. Not as bad as professional saw blade cleaners that you can pick up at any local hardware store. It does a good job of removing the gunky buildup.

Another is baking soda. Again baking soda is found in most house holds and is also non-toxic. This is cool, especially when you have kiddies running around the place. Mix it with warm to hot water and let the blade soak. Ammonia, which is used a lot to wash kitchen floors works well too. Use warm water and let the blades soak. You can also use Easy Oven Cleaner. Just spray it on, let the blade sit, and proceed to wipe it off. If it can cut through all that gunk and stuff in your oven, then it will easily clean your circular blades. Anyway, hope this advice was insightful so you can have some different options when choosing products to clean your precious saw blades.

Posted on July 9th, 2010 by Football
Filed under: Recreation and Sports