Barkeeper's Friend

[cjsmith]

After a very long and singularly useless thread about getting oil varnish off nonstick cookware, I bought some Barkeeper's Friend (the liquid/spray). For a while, though, it was clear I didn't have any actual use for the stuff.

Well, I found out what it's good for. Stainless steel. ... Wait, let me rephrase.

IT IS PHENOMENAL FOR STAINLESS STEEL I LOVE IT AND I WANT TO MARRY IT AND HAVE ITS BABIES.

There, that's more like it.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Well, you can make it, just by steeping rhubarb leaves or green potato peelings [both of which are high in it.]

But honestly, it's a mild organic acid, as is vinegar and lemon juice [acetic and citric acid respectively]. I honestly don't think that it's necessary. I use a mix very similar to that, without oxyclilic acid [I know, I misspelled it earlier] for cleaning here. It'll take vapourised and sublimated oil and grease right off painted walls, cleans and deodourises dried cat urine from carpets and strips rust & grease right off bike chains.
[all of which are use cases.]

[marahmarie]

Oh goodness *gets excited again* I'll have to try it without the acid then, and sometime soon - thanks!

[siliconshaman]

You're welcome.

Proportions are about 50/50 on the lemon juice and vinegar, and about three times that of water... and be careful adding the bicarb' as naturally it will fizz like anything. [you only need about a quarter teaspoon of it to roughly a pint of mix]

and add the liquid soap after it's stopped fizzing, otherwise you'll end up involuntarily cleaning everything in a ten yard radius.

[marahmarie]

Yeah, to start with I might skip the dish soap, as it tends to be sticky and can leave streaks on things, though I can see how it might help as a de-greaser (I just don't like the after-cleaning you have to do to remove any soap leftover from the initial cleaning) - thanks!

[siliconshaman]

Not dish soap, liquid hand soap... has different properties and you only need a tiny amount.

[marahmarie]

Ah, you left off the word "hand" in both your descriptions, so to me that's dish soap if used in cleaning. Thanks for explaining more. :)

[siliconshaman]

Yeah sorry about that... still working on my first coffee of the morning. [I think I managed to typo every other word too.]

[marahmarie]

It happens. I don't function before I've been up a good four hours without coffee pretty much on a damn-near IV drip.

[marahmarie]

Hey, just wanted to follow up on this (blast from the past, huh? Been meaning to do this for months): it works GREAT. A few thoughts: I followed your instructions exactly and the stuff took soap scum off some tubs (my own was Test Kitchen, then another tub) that was not removable any other way. My own tub looked new again when I was done, so did the next.

That said, it was a lot of scrubbing with a Scotch Brite Extreme scour pad and some wet and dry towels to get there, so I've been using it straight/no water/Dawn instead of hand soap/2-3x more baking soda or same as above but with very little water.

I feared the lack of water might damage surfaces but so far, so good (used it on laminate counters, porcelain bathtubs and sinks, stoves, ovens, painted wood stairs and painted wood baseboards). Are there any surfaces you think I should avoid applying the straighter/stronger mixture to? I think the only surfaces I haven't tried it on so far are maybe plastics and stainless steel (the inside of a dishwasher might be plastic, so maybe not).

I've been storing the leftover mix in the fridge, and am using lemon juice concentrate instead of fresh lemons to make it since concentrate is cheaper (I was using fresh lemons in my first few batches).

Would love to hear your thoughts, and thanks again - between this, discovering SB Extreme scour pads and that a paint scraper does a lot of the work of a Brillo quicker, easier, and better, my cleaning jobs have been sort of revolutionized.

[siliconshaman]

Hey, thanks for the follow up!

Yeah the mix I described was the 'general purpose' version i usually put in a squeezy bottle. For tougher jobs I make up a more concentrated batch, pretty much how you said.

The bicarb would act as a mild abrasive, so I'd avoid using the more concentrated version on soft plastic surfaces and rubber, although hard plastic probably would take it. Stainless steel certainly should be ok, although it's possible it might take the shine off it and you'd need to polish it after. But a mix of lemon juice and tartare is one of the tricks of the trade for cleaning stainless steel bar tops.

I'm very glad it's made your jobs easier though.

[marahmarie]

Yeah, I can't overstate what a big difference it's made.

My own bathtub I thought was beyond redemption - it was already in bad shape when we moved in and nothing I tried - commercial cleansers, scouring powders, Brillo, bleach, vinegar - made much difference. The potion you helped me concoct, though, at its original strength, did the trick the first time around. I was amazed as afterward the tub looked nearly new, which it probably hasn't done in upward of 30 years.

I've been using the same mix on other tubs ever since (it's been turn season so I've been hopping) and same. One week I was out of the ingredients so had to skip making a tub look new and damn, I felt bad, so in the weeks since I've loaded up to make sure that won't happen again.

The only thing that's come close to working as well in a tub, I'm just recalling now, was some PineSol concentrate I happened to have on hand months ago, but it still took some very hard work, and I don't know it did as good a job, not to mention I hate all the chemicals, so prefer natural cleaners.

The bicarb would act as a mild abrasive, so I'd avoid using the more concentrated version on soft plastic surfaces and rubber

Not to mention how it might work on a fiberglass tub is something I don't know, either (a friend pointed that out the other day) but I don't deal much with any of those materials, so will try to keep that in mind for when I do.

Thanks again. :)