Keeping your wood clean...

[Michael J Evans]

Morning everyone
Just curious what you all do to keep your finished pieces you are working on free from oil, grime, dirt, etc

My latest project of a small box has really brought it to my attention that oils and grime from my hands are really smudging / dirtying my pieces. I am going to assume this is from sharpening and getting metal bits on my hands.

Do you guys wear gloves and or wash hands everytime you sharpen, or just keep a separate rag for cleaning your hands?

What's your process?
Thanks.

[Doug Dawson]

Morning everyone
Just curious what you all do to keep your finished pieces you are working on free from oil, grime, dirt, etc

My latest project of a small box has really brought it to my attention that oils and grime from my hands are really smudging / dirtying my pieces. I am going to assume this is from sharpening and getting metal bits on my hands.

Do you guys wear gloves and or wash hands everytime you sharpen, or just keep a separate rag for cleaning your hands?

What's your process?
Thanks.

I tend to use very tight-fittting work gloves when handling raw wood (something about slivers etc.) As an a vocational auto mechanic I do the same, I’m very sensitive to this, as well as skin reaction to some of the exotics, and chemicals etc.

[Jim Koepke]

Many of the retailers catering to the building trades carry bags of rags. My favorite is the ones made up from white tee shirt material.

At my sharpening bench for oilstones there is one very used one for cleaning the stones and blades. There is one lesser used for final cleaning of a blade and there is another one mostly used for cleaning my hands. If my fingers do not smudge a clean white rag, they are unlikely to smudge my work.

Waterstones are a different story. For those it would be necessary to use some kind of hand cleaner or a damp rag. For cleaning blades after waterstones an old towel works. Getting the fine swarf from water stones off the fingers requires more work.

jtk

[lowell holmes]

I store my lumber on a wall rack.

https://www.google.com/search?q=garage+wall+lumber+rack&oq=garage+wall+lumber+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i22i30i457j0i22i30.10471j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[Michael J Evans]

Many of the retailers catering to the building trades carry bags of rags. My favorite is the ones made up from white tee shirt material.

At my sharpening bench for oilstones there is one very used one for cleaning the stones and blades. There is one lesser used for final cleaning of a blade and there is another one mostly used for cleaning my hands. If my fingers do not smudge a clean white rag, they are unlikely to smudge my work.

Waterstones are a different story. For those it would be necessary to use some kind of hand cleaner or a damp rag. For cleaning blades after waterstones an old towel works. Getting the fine swarf from water stones off the fingers requires more work.

jtk

Thanks Jim.
Sounds like I may need to invest in more rags (aka t shirts and socks lol) I use both oil and diamond stones. For my diamond stones I use windex or water / detergent and obviously oil for oil stones. I have one rag that is my sharpening rag which is very well used and I use to clean both stones.

Maybe I should get some gojo for cleaning my hands afterwards?

It was amazing to me how I went from prisitine planed surfaces to a very dingy box. I didn't notice it all at one, likely it was a accumulation of my handling throughout the project.

[Andrew Gibson]

When I started building instruments I learned quickly to was my hands religiously. I started washing hands between each operation. There is nothing worse than tryin to sand dirty fingerprints out of the inside of a guitar. I got to the point that I would reach out to pick up a piece and think "have a washed my hands?" Usually that ended with a trip to the kitchen sink. This has transferred over to my furniture work just not as religiously. I also now have a sink in the shop.

[glenn bradley]

Once I reach the point of putting a final surface preparation on parts I do make sure my hands are clean before handling. If you are getting oils on parts in quantities that a wipe with some abrasives won't take off I would re-think your work flow.

I do get pretty grungy when sharpening, lubricating tools (hand or powered) and when moving rough stock around. I rarely go from one of these tasks directly to handling near-finished parts.

Maybe a reserved spot in the shop for parts to wait that are near-finished so that they don't have to be moved from place to place at odd times? In a small shop it is hard to commit such a space and I have been known to carry parts into the home office to keep them "safe" if there will be a delay before assembly.

[Lee Schierer]

I wash my hands any time I go to the shop to work on wood. Even normal oils from your hands can leave stains on clean wood, particularly wood that is ready to finish.

[Zachary Hoyt]

My hands tend to be dry and even to crack in the winter, so I rarely get grime or oil on wood from them. If I have spilled glue on the workbench and gotten my hand in it without noticing I can get gluey fingerprints sometimes, but it happens very rarely, usually when I'm in the middle of a glue-up and trying to hurry too much.

[Doug Dawson]

Thanks Jim.
Sounds like I may need to invest in more rags (aka t shirts and socks lol) I use both oil and diamond stones. For my diamond stones I use windex or water / detergent and obviously oil for oil stones. I have one rag that is my sharpening rag which is very well used and I use to clean both stones.

Maybe I should get some gojo for cleaning my hands afterwards?

Beware the pumice that gojo etc may include for cleaning purposes. Nobody likes to have volcanic ash as part of their tool prep regimen... Plus it contains its own oils and emoluments.

[Jerry Olexa]

I keep plenty of discarded T-Shirts nearby and I wash my hands often as needed in the sink adjacent to the shop...

[Warren Mickley]

The method I use is mentioned in Nicholson (1812) and other old sources. We use a trying plane to true up the surfaces. Then we do joinery, molding etc.. Then right before glue up, or right before finishing, we go over the surfaces with a smoothing plane. The smoothing plane is used to clean the surfaces of dirt, reference marks, scuffs, and the like. Usually a single pass over the surface with the plane set very fine is sufficient.

I use both water stones and oil stones, but I don't have a problem with fingers getting dirty. You might examine your technique to see how your fingers are getting dirty.

[Scott Winners]

Also under the fingernails. Used to be a fella could buy "orange wood sticks" by the box of 100 at the drug store. Bevel on one end, taper cut on the other, soft enough to blossom when wet, but stiff enough to get the grime out.

I have a particular knife with just the right angle on the end to scrape the entire underside of my fingernails without causing pain, but I sure do miss orange wood sticks.

[Michael J Evans]

Overwhelmingly it sounds like I need to quit being lazy and just go wash my hands more. I sharpen where I do most of my work (left side of bench) and then usually go right back to work.

I have a deep sink the the laundry room leading into the garage so it's only a matter of a 15 steps or so. But when your in the groove it's hard to quit

[Jim Koepke]

Also under the fingernails. Used to be a fella could buy "orange wood sticks" by the box of 100 at the drug store. Bevel on one end, taper cut on the other, soft enough to blossom when wet, but stiff enough to get the grime out.

I have a particular knife with just the right angle on the end to scrape the entire underside of my fingernails without causing pain, but I sure do miss orange wood sticks.

You can get 50 for ~$4 > https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Cuticle-Remover-Manicure-Pedicure/dp/B07SYZSDVY/ref=asc_df_B07SYZSDVY/

We used to use them for working on circuit boards when desoldering items.

jtk

[Scott Winners]

Added to cart, thanks Jim.

I look forward to having a separate sharpening table. For now I have a thin sheet of plywood with 1x2 stops screwed to it so I can set it on my bench top for dirty things like sharpening or metal work. It means I have to stop working, clean off the bench top, put the cover on, sharpen, take the cover off, get back to work. Pain in the neck.

[Michael J Evans]

Scott
Sounds like i should be doing something similar until I can make a sharpening table. I have a old desk, that the legs snapped off of. I've been tempted to block it up until it's flush with the bench top. And use that as my assembly table / sharpening / catch all. It has some type of coating (maybe urethane) on the top that is extremely slick. Glue pops right off of it.

[Scott Winners]

Scott
Sounds like i should be doing something similar until I can make a sharpening table. I have a old desk, that the legs snapped off of. I've been tempted to block it up until it's flush with the bench top. And use that as my assembly table / sharpening / catch all. It has some type of coating (maybe urethane) on the top that is extremely slick. Glue pops right off of it.

It is certainly not my place to tell another wood worker what to do. I am mostly here to learn stuff. It seems to me from reading a lot serious amatuers and up have a "sharpening station." It seems like a good idea, have the bench grinder and the belt sander and the stones over on a dedicated surface away from the clean wood. I am confident I would sharpen sooner and more often if I could just walk over "there" and do it without a lot of drama. Saw vise, or whatever solution for saw sharpening, etc. All that 'stuff.'

I have been tempted to build a holder for my diamond plates similar to the one Paul Sellers shows in his youtubes often, but I am just not fastidious enough to keep my bench top clean if I did that, I would end up with some swarf on every project somewhere. At the end of the day, for me anyway, sharpening is metal work. It is a fundamental component of wood working, but it is metal work.

[Matthew Hills]

I sharpen on a general purpose bench, away from my woodworking bench.
This does mean some extra steps to go sharpen, but it also means I'm not splashing water or stone slurry around on workpieces or bench.
I do use rags to wipe down the blade after sharpening and clean my hands.

As pieces get close to final prep, I will try to keep them protected when I'm not actively working on them.
Having pieces sitting around in a near-final state for a long time is inviting trouble, but as a hobbyist, this is something I need to work around.
I do try to protect any near-finished pieces -- storing flat and out of normal traffic, covered from dust and any other insults looking for them.

One other problem area I've had is contamination between contrasting wood species from sanding dust.
For flat work, planes/scrapers can give a clean result. I don't have a magic solution for this when the piece is shaped and I want to use sandpaper to smooth it out.

Matt

[Richard Hutchings]

This is a good reminder for me. I once had a mouse take up residence with babies in my mandolin I was working on. Reshaped the f-holes on me.

[Bill Klapwyk]

My sharpening station is on a bench 3 or 4 steps away from my workbench where I have a box of non-latex shop gloves I put on when sharpening my tools. The stones are wiped off with an old t-shirt rag and the tools are cleaned with a cleaner t-shirt rag during the sharpening process. At the end of the sharpening process the tools are wiped with the same rag followed by a much cleaner rag to make sure the tool is clean and dry before going back to the workbench and after taking the gloves off I wipe my hands off on the clean rag to remove any moisture from wearing the gloves.
Tools are always sharpened prior to final prep of wood and if the wood has to sit around for a while prior to completion I put them in an area where I can keep them flat and covered until the time comes for completion.