Because most of the houses I bought for renovation has had fires in them, I became a heavy user of ammonia to clean the place with. It cuts through soot with ease, but doesn't do anything for physically scorched areas with a layer of burn on them.
This is where the Oxalic acid shined at cutting the surface charring off.
The old original Bar Keepers Friend, when it cost 6 bucks a can always made the cooktop like new.
But the new version worked very poorly, and the reason was it had hardly any oxalic acid it in now.
That is why we bought some to add to the cans when we opened them the first time.
We bought the powder not the crystals. And it got our BKF back to working like normal again.
Muriatic Acid diluted 50% is OK to use on ceramic cooktops and fireplace ceramic glass fronts, etc.
But it can dull regular glass, but not as quick as sulphuric acid will, which actually eats glass, hi hi.
I've never had any luck using hydrochloric acid as a cleaner though. Just beads up on oily things.
And I'm afraid to try and mix chemicals, because you know sometimes that can kill you fast.
In the restaurant business, we used both Ethanol and Methyl Alcohol, but normally bought a special product that was not as flammable and almost odor free. The only place it was used was to clean the gas stove burner components. I doubt if it is still made though, since I could not find any a couple of years after we closed the restaurant.
Baking Soda actually works pretty amazingly with vinegar soaked charred carbon buildup.
Non-Fungible Tokens
Forum rules
Post a new topic to begin a chat.
Any topic is acceptable, and topic drift is permissible.
Post a new topic to begin a chat.
Any topic is acceptable, and topic drift is permissible.
Re: Non-Fungible Tokens
I buy vinegar by the gallon and baking soda by the pound. There is no better cleaner combination known to man. It is my staple cleaning method for inside the cookware. I have an old grated cheese shaker filled with baking soda which I use much the same way as you would Barternders Friend. I sprinkle it in the pan, pour some vinegar out of the jug, and watch the pretty bubbles. Some situations, typically those involving cooked tomato, require a couple drops of dish soap added to the mix. And the really tough gunk simply needs an over night treatment to work well. The outside and bottom of the cookware submits to the not enhanced version of Bartenders Friend. It's just the stove itself that is a devil and sometimes impossible to clean.
I'm surprised to read that you never had luck with hydrochloric acid. That's the active ingredient in most oven cleaners, Easy Off in particular. You are the first person to tell me that they use muriatic acid for cleaning cookware. I've seen it used for cleaning bricks on construction sites though. LOL I guess if you dilute it enough it becomes less potent, but I'm like you and have a hesitancy to concoct too many chemicals of which I know very little about. And, by the way, the Bartenders Friend we have in the kitchen is a liquid/paste. Mom used to use something called Kitchen Klenser but my wife of many years prefers the Bartender stuff.
I'm surprised to read that you never had luck with hydrochloric acid. That's the active ingredient in most oven cleaners, Easy Off in particular. You are the first person to tell me that they use muriatic acid for cleaning cookware. I've seen it used for cleaning bricks on construction sites though. LOL I guess if you dilute it enough it becomes less potent, but I'm like you and have a hesitancy to concoct too many chemicals of which I know very little about. And, by the way, the Bartenders Friend we have in the kitchen is a liquid/paste. Mom used to use something called Kitchen Klenser but my wife of many years prefers the Bartender stuff.
Re: Non-Fungible Tokens
I found muriatic acid at 50% dilution with water, from whatever the concentration it is sold in at hardware stores, has always worked great for me for lots of purposes.
Separating mixed bed deionization granules, recharging the anion portion of them, Lye for recharging the cation portion of the granules. Works great for cleaning soot from fireplace and Franklin stove ceramic glass, and for loosening carbon buildup on other things. But hydrochloric acid works best for loosening carbon buildup on things.
The only cleaning vinegar we buy is the Industrial Strength stuff we also use as weed killer.
For use in foods we only get the distilled white vinegar or apple cider vinegar.
There is a newer product that came out after I was out of the restaurant business for many years named Carbon-Off. I'm pretty sure it is the same Ethanol and Methyl Alcohol blend we used, only under a fancy trade name.
There were a few products I had used for years before they ever came out on the market for people to buy under a fancy trade name.
My cousin was a pilot, both military and commercial. They used acidified isopropranol on the planes to get them to shed water, it even kept the windshields clean. So I used to use what little bit he brought to me on my cars windows. A number of years later it came out under the name Rain-X and sold like hotcakes. I missed that boat, hi hi.
On the farm we used Epsom Salts mixed with water to add to the batteries on the tractors and trucks when they started getting weak. It did a great job of giving you another year or two out of an old tired battery. Here too I missed the boat. Someone packaged something similar and sold it under the trade name VX-6 battery rejuvenator.
I started other businesses though that died simply because they were too far ahead of their time, with many hurdles to cross.
Today they are commonplace with many businesses doing them.
Separating mixed bed deionization granules, recharging the anion portion of them, Lye for recharging the cation portion of the granules. Works great for cleaning soot from fireplace and Franklin stove ceramic glass, and for loosening carbon buildup on other things. But hydrochloric acid works best for loosening carbon buildup on things.
The only cleaning vinegar we buy is the Industrial Strength stuff we also use as weed killer.
For use in foods we only get the distilled white vinegar or apple cider vinegar.
There is a newer product that came out after I was out of the restaurant business for many years named Carbon-Off. I'm pretty sure it is the same Ethanol and Methyl Alcohol blend we used, only under a fancy trade name.
There were a few products I had used for years before they ever came out on the market for people to buy under a fancy trade name.
My cousin was a pilot, both military and commercial. They used acidified isopropranol on the planes to get them to shed water, it even kept the windshields clean. So I used to use what little bit he brought to me on my cars windows. A number of years later it came out under the name Rain-X and sold like hotcakes. I missed that boat, hi hi.
On the farm we used Epsom Salts mixed with water to add to the batteries on the tractors and trucks when they started getting weak. It did a great job of giving you another year or two out of an old tired battery. Here too I missed the boat. Someone packaged something similar and sold it under the trade name VX-6 battery rejuvenator.
I started other businesses though that died simply because they were too far ahead of their time, with many hurdles to cross.
Today they are commonplace with many businesses doing them.
Re: Non-Fungible Tokens
I had a buddy who became something like a distributor for Rain-X. I never heard of the stuff until he mentioned it one day at lunch. It was great stuff but only worked for it's intended purpose if you were going fast enough; something like in excess of 30mph. Since much of my driving was in the city, Rain-X didn't do much to keep the water off my windshield. However, it did provide a high polish on the windshield surface. The wipers worked really well after that, but only until they wiped the residual completely off the glass. Then it was back to normal. I can see how it would be perfect for aircraft, but us city dwellers would not benefit much from using it on our cars.
Schnucks used to handle two kinds of vinegar in gallon jugs. The food vinegar was 5% dilution and the cleaning vinegar was 6%. LOL Really, that's what it said on the labels and I thought it was a joke when I first read it. They no longer sell the cleaning vinegar, but I was able to get some of that industrial grade stuff off the Internet. That was 15% acid and came with a book full of warnings about how to use it. I've not yet tried to clean anything with it, but some day I will do the math to figure out how to dilute that 15% stuff down to a 5-6% solution. I rarely use vinegar for cooking but I do have a quart bottle of it should I need it.
I guess muriatic acid would work well on burnt carbon and soot. We had a wood burning stove but never had a problem with smoke, thank goodness for that. However, when I wanted to do a good job painting a wall I always used TSP to wash the walls first. That easily took the grease off the walls by the stove. They stopped putting phosphates into laundry soap under the claim it caused a lot of pollution problems down stream. That might be true but then why is TSP legal? Likewise dishwasher soap has a lot of phosphates in it. If you ever want to get some really clean clothes again, wash them in dishwasher soap. LOL
Schnucks used to handle two kinds of vinegar in gallon jugs. The food vinegar was 5% dilution and the cleaning vinegar was 6%. LOL Really, that's what it said on the labels and I thought it was a joke when I first read it. They no longer sell the cleaning vinegar, but I was able to get some of that industrial grade stuff off the Internet. That was 15% acid and came with a book full of warnings about how to use it. I've not yet tried to clean anything with it, but some day I will do the math to figure out how to dilute that 15% stuff down to a 5-6% solution. I rarely use vinegar for cooking but I do have a quart bottle of it should I need it.
I guess muriatic acid would work well on burnt carbon and soot. We had a wood burning stove but never had a problem with smoke, thank goodness for that. However, when I wanted to do a good job painting a wall I always used TSP to wash the walls first. That easily took the grease off the walls by the stove. They stopped putting phosphates into laundry soap under the claim it caused a lot of pollution problems down stream. That might be true but then why is TSP legal? Likewise dishwasher soap has a lot of phosphates in it. If you ever want to get some really clean clothes again, wash them in dishwasher soap. LOL
Re: Non-Fungible Tokens
You are lucky if Rain-X didn't cause your windshield wipers to chatter, because it would grab the rubber blades of the wiper, hi hi.
If you did a lot of highway driving, yes it did work great then.
It was used on the entire aircraft to prevent water from sticking to the plane. Apparently that caused drag and excessive fuel consumption.
I don't remember the concentration of the cleaning vinegar we buy, without going out to the garage and checking, but I'm pretty sure it is like 10 to 15%, it's strong stuff compared to what we use on foods.
The only problem with TSP in our water, or phosphates for that matter, was it cause algae blooms, but even they were rare.
Like anything else the government gets wind of that they can find some way to control, in the end it usually makes no difference.
Changing topic since we are on chemicals
Bleach
You have to watch really close when buying laundry bleach from a store.
The normal concentration for laundry bleach is 6% sodium hypochlorite.
When companies like Purex and others have it on sale for a low price, read that label, it is often only 3-1/2%.
If the ingredients list does NOT show a percentage, it means that bottle is less than 1.15%, but has to be more than .65%.
People think they are getting a bargain getting a gallon for a buck, but it would take 6 gallons to equal 1 gallon of the 3 buck a gallon stuff at 6%.
Every once in a while I will find 9% for sale, and when I do I buy it.
Divide it into two jugs and add 4 cups of water to each jug.
This gets it down into the ballpark for doing the laundry.
If you did a lot of highway driving, yes it did work great then.
It was used on the entire aircraft to prevent water from sticking to the plane. Apparently that caused drag and excessive fuel consumption.
I don't remember the concentration of the cleaning vinegar we buy, without going out to the garage and checking, but I'm pretty sure it is like 10 to 15%, it's strong stuff compared to what we use on foods.
The only problem with TSP in our water, or phosphates for that matter, was it cause algae blooms, but even they were rare.
Like anything else the government gets wind of that they can find some way to control, in the end it usually makes no difference.
Changing topic since we are on chemicals
Bleach
You have to watch really close when buying laundry bleach from a store.
The normal concentration for laundry bleach is 6% sodium hypochlorite.
When companies like Purex and others have it on sale for a low price, read that label, it is often only 3-1/2%.
If the ingredients list does NOT show a percentage, it means that bottle is less than 1.15%, but has to be more than .65%.
People think they are getting a bargain getting a gallon for a buck, but it would take 6 gallons to equal 1 gallon of the 3 buck a gallon stuff at 6%.
Every once in a while I will find 9% for sale, and when I do I buy it.
Divide it into two jugs and add 4 cups of water to each jug.
This gets it down into the ballpark for doing the laundry.
Re: Non-Fungible Tokens
Back in the olden days mom would buy glass gallon bottles of green liquid the seller claimed was bleach. He made the stuff in his garage, literally, and sold it for about half the price mom would have to pay at the grocery. I have no idea what the concentration was but it REALLY smelled like chlorine and did a really good job on the linen, or whatever mom bleached. I rarely got involved with laundry after I married, and at those times I did the laundry bleaching liquid was not involved. My wife of many years uses those cute little soap pods that kids like to eat just for the hell of it. I guess there is some kind of bleach powder included. All I know is that one or two pods will do the laundry depending on the size of the load.
Re: Non-Fungible Tokens
Sounds like he was buying 90% Vertilox and diluting it down to around 5%, which would make it appear greenish.
After I shut down my swimming pool, I still had several buckets of calcium hydrochloride, which is also a bleaching agent.
I don't normally use bleach in laundry unless I need it for sterilization reasons. Like for socks and underwear, or white bed sheets and pillowcases.
My first wife used SALVO tablets for laundry. When I did laundry I bought 5 gallon buckets of laundry detergent. I think it worked better. My wife uses liquid laundry detergent with no fragrances in it. Does a good job.
After I shut down my swimming pool, I still had several buckets of calcium hydrochloride, which is also a bleaching agent.
I don't normally use bleach in laundry unless I need it for sterilization reasons. Like for socks and underwear, or white bed sheets and pillowcases.
My first wife used SALVO tablets for laundry. When I did laundry I bought 5 gallon buckets of laundry detergent. I think it worked better. My wife uses liquid laundry detergent with no fragrances in it. Does a good job.