Shop uses for vinegar

[Steeler]

What other uses have you found?


Application of apple cider vinegar for burns is an old folk remedy. When my son was three years old he pulled a pot of boiling hot sweet and sour sauce off the stove and it splashed onto his bare shoulder and ran down his bare back. My wife immediately grabbed the gallon jug of said vinegar out of the cupboard and poured it out on the affected area. The skin was cooled so quickly that there was no skin damage whatsoever. The kitchen floor was a sight to behold but that was of very minor cosequence. We have used it to sooth sunburn as well. Ever burn yourself at the forge?

[gking]

This is awesome info.

thanks all

[Cody Fagley]

I know I'm not adding much since it runs the same concept, but I've always used lemon juice for cleaning.

[pkrankow]

I know I'm not adding much since it runs the same concept, but I've always used lemon juice for cleaning.

Citric acid is used to clean and passify stainless steel. Acids like vinegar and muriatic acid will instead strip the chromium oxide and allow it to develop surface rust.

Phil

[edge9001]

I have a use for vinegar youguys might not think of. put it in the quench tank and or slack tub. If mosquitos are as much a problem for you as they are for me. i put about 1/3 of a gallon of plain white vinegar into my slack tub(made from a 25 gallon cooler) to kill and keep out the mosquitos. I find if I leave a tub of water in the open air bugs tend to want to grow in it. so the vinegar makes the water a bit acidic and they wont go in there. Since my tub is plastic the vinegar wont do any harm.

[Julius]

No one has mentioned iron dye yet.
Vinegar plus steal wool makes a dark black dye for leather.
Cram as much fine steel wool as you can in a quart canning jar, fill with vinegar put on the lid and let it sit until all the steel wool has disolved. When you are ready to dye leather black cut the dye in half with water. Aply to the leather and watch the magic happen. After however many coats you decide to use finish with you usual method of leather perservitive.

[BM454]

One to Two cups in a load of laundry takes out oil and grease smells. Helps clean as too.

[ianinsa]

Putting vinegar in laundry, use borax in the laundry, you bunch of old washer women !
On getting grease out of laundry if you spray it with bugspray prior ti putting it in the machine and then add some vinegar to the water it cleans and smells ok!

Ian

[pkrankow]

Since we are talking about laundry, if your cat peed on your laundry pile, vinegar removes the smell by neutralizing the urine and other smelly chemicals. Sometimes takes 2 washing so be generous with the vinegar (I use a pint per load). Pre-soaking is very effective, but you need detergent. Borax seems to improve the results.

I am surprised I have not killed the cat yet.

Phil

[Don A]

Feed the white vinegar all of the fine steel wool it will eat (over a few days time) and use it for stain, particularly on veg tanned leather. It gives a deep black color. Someone said a pre-soak in tea helps the leather take the stain better. Finish off with hot bee's wax makes some nice looking leather.

Sorry, I didn't notice that this was a 2-pager, and Julius already beat me to it.

[jimmy seale]

also we kept a jug at the costic barrel (sodium hydroxide) to use for accidental contact it will help nutralize it

[Bentiron1946]

Drinking vinegar!? We had an old lady at church that lived to be a 101 and every morning she drank a cup of apple cider vinegar, said it cleaned the rust out of her pipes, out here it probably neutralized the alkali in the water. She also used plain white vinegar in the water to her garden, a cup to every 5 gallons of water, had the best garden around.

[Phil H]

When I was in Far North Queensland (near the Great Barrier Reef), the beaches had posts set in the sand. On the post was a box with a bottle of vinegar in it. This was used to treat jellyfish stings (which are potentially fatal).

[Pault17]

Thomas and Gerald (and everybody else too),
My 15 year-old daughter was reading one of the Laura Ingals-Wilder books (long series of Little house on the prarie books) and she came up with a recipie of 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar to 1 qt of water with a few tsp's of sugar to cut the youza effect, along with a tsp of ginger powder. I was recently up in the attic for a few hours working on my heat pump - ended up re-running all of the thermostat wire, a major pita. the attic temp was above 150 the whole time. I sweated a bunch. But even being as hot as I was, I could and did drink more than half a gallon of this stuff, refigerator cold, with no cramping and no heat related problems. once you get used to the taste, it ain't bad. and somewhere I read that drinking bits of vinegar is good for the system.

Oh, and sponging vinegar onto a sunburn almost immediately takes the pain away for a good long while

[Don A]

the youza effect

I was going to improve my over all health by taking a shot of straight apple cider vinegar, with the intention of doing it daily.

I proceeded to pour about 1oz in a short glass and then tossed it back...

Some of that stuff went up the back of my throat and toward my sinuses... I thought I was going to die. A similar experience to shooting caburator cleaner up your nose.

But boy, did I feel healthy.

[12345678910]

Cleaning critter urine stain smell from concrete.

[peacock]

We haven't come close to all the uses yet. Buy THE VINEGAR BOOK,
you will never be with out vinegar again. I drink some every day. Even soak
my tired feet in it.


put flea market cresent wrenches, pliers, tongs, etc in it 2 days they free right up
wipe bare steel with it paint will stick like crazy. cleans your glasses the best car
windows too.

Put a layer of paper towels on your anvil face soak it with vinegar cover with plastic
over nite rust will wash rite off. Be sure to oil or it will rust again.

[Ten Hammers]

take a common plastic 12 ounce drinking glass. Fill to within an inch of the top with common cheap white vinegar. Nuke on high for one minute. Put your needle files in the glass and wait an hour. Stiff wire brush the files as you take them out and place on a warm radiator or shoot air on them to dry. you now have new files for a large part.

[David E.]

Vinegar is also good for wasp and bee stings. I also put a little in the water when I am poaching an egg, it stops it seperating.
My dad always said it thins the blood, so everytime I eat some pickles i have a mouthful.

[Ted T]

I hope I am not repeating what has already been said. I found this to be a very useful and informative read.
Ten Hammers mentioned using heat to dry the parts. He said; “place on a warm radiator or shoot air on them to dry”.
I would like to emphasize that I think heating after processing the part is of benefit and worth the time to do it!

What I have done in the past that worked out well for me is as follows:
Depending how messed up a part is, I recycle the part every one or two days, sometime three days. Experience teaches you the process.
I take the part out of the vinegar and clean it up usually with a wire brush.
I evaluate what has been accomplished by the vinegar and elbow grease to that point. And if need be, I place it back in the old or fresh vinegar and repeat the process until I feel it is done!

After I am satisfied the parts are cleaned by the Vinegar and elbow-grease, I place the parts in a dense mixture of water and Baking Soda so as to neutralize the acid.

Then I wash the parts off with soap and warm water, rinse well, hand dry them, and then place them in an old (one that my wife let me have) Pre-heated “Hot” Cast Iron Frying pan with the source of heat turned off.
The parts heat enough through induction to purge themselves of moisture, and I do not feel that I would be messing with any tempering issues that way (I hope!).

Example: About two years ago I had a bucket of tools that I had bought at a Pawn Shop, brought it home and left it in a shed.
I did not know that they had been sitting under a leak in the roof for a couple of years.
In fact the bucket still had a little sitting water in it. Here are some examples of the content of the bucket. Calipers, a Monkey Wrench, Screwdrivers, Open end Wrenches, Sockets, plus several other tools.
The monkey wrench was seized up as well as some of the other tools. All of the tools were oxidized and packed with grease and dirt that had hardened.

I was surprised and was very impressed the first time I tried the process of using Vinegar and then Heating the part to dry it.
By having too many irons in the fire (or laziness) I forgot about oiling up this bunch of old tools after I had finished cleaning them up in the fashion I just described.
I discovered that I had left them on my “Project To Do Shelf” for about three weeks before I realized that I needed to oil them. To my surprise, there was no sign of re-oxidation at all.
That entire batch became functional tools again.

I want to mention one more thing that has been a big help to me.
When you are cleaning a large or ill-regular shaped object of some type, you can save on the amount of Vinegar to use, or having to find a container large enough to use.

Just by placing everything in a (large or small) plastic bag. It will take on the shape of the object, and with a little bag/vinegar management practice, wooooooola it works!

[gerald brostek]

Temperature is important. Cold vinigar works very slow. Warm or almost hot vinigar works much faster. Almost as fast as Muratic and a whole lot cheaper and safer.

[bajajoaquin]

Citric acid is used to clean and passify stainless steel. Acids like vinegar and muriatic acid will instead strip the chromium oxide and allow it to develop surface rust.

Phil

Thank you for this post. I just bought a new house that requires a new kitchen (and two bathrooms, and flooring, and... well, never mind), and I'm going to make the cabinet hardware. My wife doesn't like the dark finish that comes with the wax treatment on mild steel, and my stainless items are pretty dark from the scale. I was going to go home tonight and drop a leaf key fob into a jar of vinegar, but now I think I'll make a citric acid solution instead.

Maybe I'll drop my first basket twist into a jar of vinegar. Just to keep on topic!

[Akad]

So when you use vinegar to clean scale and stuff off of steel, can it be reused? If so, how many times? Or do you have to replace the vinegar every time?

[pkrankow]

I have been using my vinegar for a while. I keep it in a sealed plastic container (plastic coffee can). It will not preform overnight if it is done.

Phil

[Akad]

Thanks for the info. That's neat though, at a little over $2.00 per gallon, it's a pretty sweet deal. Been keeping mine in a big-ish plastic protein powder jar.