As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
TL's vocation exposes them to some petrochemical products which are fantastic in composition as they are designed to lubricate under extreme conditions. Being such a product, it means when they get on clothing, they do not come off either.
If you have ever been around outboard motor oil that is put into the transmission, you will realize a bit of what I am speaking of, in this grease or oil is sour in the worst type of odor.
So I went to work on this with a nice soap called Purex. It did nothing to this polymer based grease and shed it like water.
I next tried Oxydol with Biz inside.........it did absolutely nothing.
Next on the list was Dawn, as they put Dawn down on every kind of oil spill to break it down........it had absolutely no effect, as this was a plastic grease, and while some plastics degrade with exposure oil, this did not.
I next hosed it down with CLR which cuts eveything.........the grease mocked that too.
I next hosed it down with a shop cleaner called Tough Stuff........grease really mocked that even after I let it soak all night in it.
Thing is, as I had them hanging there, they actually stunk worse than when this all started. I will mention too that the pants were washed in extremely hot water and what was it like 5 times!!!!!!!!!
This pissed me off, as I will not be defeated by something like this without a brain.....won't be defeated by anything with a brain included.
So I checked online on all sorts of things, and came across a product called. Listoil which Walmart was listed as having.......no fricking Listoil at Walmart. Big help there.
Some dolt mentioned Brake Cleaner, so I decided to give that a go. CRC Brakleen was the product, and of course I never read the lable, and just hosed the jeans down with it liberally.
I noticed as I did this outside, that the green chemical treated deck I was performing this on, gave up the ghost on the pants, so it seemed like this stuff at least was in the mood to do something.
So I put that into the washer with scoop of Oxydol and let it do the cycle, and opened the washer up and all I could smell was brake cleaner.
I figured that was a step in the right direction as I was not smelling heinous sour oil, so I decided to give it another go in I apparently had killed the grease as it's odor was gone from the brake cleaner, which meant now I might be able to neutralize it with the oil neutralizing products, so I rubbed Dawn into the pants to a white slick foam, and into the boiler they went with more Oxydol for another cycle.
That did it as all I could smell was stinky Oxydol and the shadow stain of grease was gone.
I then dried the pants.
I got to looking at this brake cleaner and it is from Ball the canning jar people apparently out of Pennsylvania in a company called CRC Industries and while no MSDS is or whatever is listed on the spray can, there is a warning over tetrachloroethylene which causes critter cancer. I know it burned on my skin until I got it off.....but point is tetra is like 4, chloro is chlorine and ethyl is an alcohol type thing.
TL mentioned some whiz at work decided to bleach their jeans to make them Hippie, and leaving them in this stuff overnight, all that was left was the metal bits.
This was really some good grease and it refused to give up the ghost. An amazing compound which the normal wood ash and lard could not join to as that is what soap is about in cleaning. Dawn could not break the bonds of it to disperse, but this tetra stuff in chemcial reaction broke it down, and as the cotton in the pants was only exposed to it for 5 minutes, the material apparently was not eaten.
All fascinating stuff. I do not know if fingernail polish remover would have worked or if a good shot of kerosene would have prevailed. It just amazes me for an adventure that nothing in normal products could join or break this bond.
Some day I might whip up some gun cleaner to see how that plays with things, but in this case, this was the only process that worked.
No one ever thinks about chemical bonds or long chains from gravy to pudding, but it is all around us, in plastics to grease. None of that happens without things being glued together at a molecular level, and it requires things to unglue them, and that is what soap is, as soap is wood ash, soaked to form lye, which then in chemical bonding with lard, creates a product that removes human oils or dirt from your skin or clothes.
They used to put phosphates in soap which is a salt of phosphoric acid. I am presuming there is extra oxygen in that compound, as that grabs dirt, and it is why they liked to put that into bombs as it blew up nicely, same thing with fertilizers in the phosphorous.
Too much information, but all the same you get yourself and clothes clean by breaking bonds or getting something to bond and pull the dirt and oil away.
Well that is revealing again far too much of the things I know of base building blocks and I should stop or this will be a lecture on how a light or photon bomb is just like having your clothes fade when exposed to the sun, just would have to do it quicker and more concentrated.
I am pleased to have conquered the grease stain as management was clueless in it. I like beating the always experts as much as objects with no brains.
I know you are all thinking now about that photon bomb, but I am not going to tell you how to do that, as humans have enough ways to obliterate themselves.
agtG
