# Well...I'll be darn...



## toolroom (Mar 31, 2013)

Being a relatively new member (here), I'm always intrigued by the tooling and shop forums. I read Nelson's thread on How to clean and sharpen files, (posted 11/22/12 and thought "yeah, right. Vinegar?" Being a retired machinist and being in the trade for many years... Back in the day, there were companies that would acid dip your old files, but the EPA has restrictions on "hazardous materials, so that practice went by the wayside.
Yep, I went and bought a galon of vinegar and an aluminum pan, as some of these ancient files were of length, a brass wire brush, and brought the vinegar to boiling point and poured the contents over the files.
Now I will tell you that I inherited a toolbox many years ago with all sorts of mechanics tooling. some I replaced but there are two drawers that are..."junk," These files are rusty, loaded with grunge , and had been that way for thirty plus years.
I began to wirebrush the cleanest ones first after about five minutes, and by the time I had all my 16 files cleaned ...I was totally amazed at the difference in the metal. Wow!
I will not say they all looked brand new, two of them are still slightly brownish discolored, whereas the rest are the color of cast iron.
Saved a bunch of money there. Thanks to Nelson's tutorial. Thanks Nelson, and NO, I won't split the money I saved with you!
dinkin


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## Ray C (Apr 1, 2013)

Boiling vinegar... I bet that made everyone in the household real happy .


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## toolroom (Apr 1, 2013)

Ray, 
The trick is to do it when the house mouse isn't home. BUT next time, I'll use rubber gloves it's been two days and my hands still smell like vinegar!
dinkin


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## ScrapMetal (Apr 1, 2013)

Vinegar is pretty popular around our house - the wife cans a lot.  It also gets used to clean the kitchen counters and about a hundred other misc. uses.   I kind of like the smell of vinegar. 

-Ron


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## 24more (Apr 1, 2013)

If you save orange, lemon, ect peels. You put them in a jar, fill with vinegar, let sit a week or so, your vinegar smells of the fruit peel. We use it a lot for cleaning in our house also.


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## ScrapMetal (Apr 2, 2013)

24more said:


> If you save orange, lemon, ect peels. You put them in a jar, fill with vinegar, let sit a week or so, your vinegar smells of the fruit peel. We use it a lot for cleaning in our house also.



Thanks much.  I'll pass that on to SWMBO.  :biggrin:

-Ron


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## jumps4 (Apr 2, 2013)

a little off topic
i was watching a keith fenner video the other day and he uses white vinigar to disolve epoxy off his hands. it wiped it right off, i have had the epoxy problem before and it takes a week to wear off i'm going to try it next time. it looked like it actually disolved the epoxy not just lifted it.
steve


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## ScrapMetal (Apr 3, 2013)

I may try that the next time I have to make a repair with an epoxy.  That stuff always seems to get on my hands, even when I wear gloves.

-Ron


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## KBeitz (Jul 14, 2018)

For years I have cleaned my files with a glass jar of old battery
acid. No Boiling needed. Works great.


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## mrbreezeet1 (Jul 14, 2018)

Are you using white vinegar or apple cider vinegar?
3 parts white vinegar and one part dawn dish degerent makes a "no scrub" cleaner.
Seems to repel ants from my counter tops too........ L0L 

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## aliva (Jul 14, 2018)

I've used cleaning vinegar it has 10% acidic acid as opposed to regular vinegar which is only 5 %


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## mrbreezeet1 (Jul 14, 2018)

aliva said:


> I've used cleaning vinegar it has 10% acidic acid as opposed to regular vinegar which is only 5 %


Thank you sir!
I have used vinegar to remove rust before.
I will have to try it to restore files.
I had never heard of boiling vinegar though. 

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