The Yankee Way to Clean a Paint Brush

[Peter]

This may be a trick some of you already know, but I never heard of it until I accidentally stumbled upon it.

For a typical 1 ½ or 2 inch sash brush you will need a 1 quart zip lock, an empty coffee can or equivalent, and a couple of ounces of thinner.

Put about an ounce thinner into your zip-lock. Insert your brush holding the baggie on the diagonal so the thinner and the bristles are in the bottom corner and the brush handle sticks out the opposite top corner. Zip the bag shut as much as you can around the handle.

Massage the bristles with your fingers through the bag to get the thinner up into them. It only takes a few squishes. You aren’t trying to clean all the paint out, you are just getting the thinner worked in.

Place the brush in the bag into the coffee can so that the bag supports the brush and the bristles aren’t jammed into the bottom or bent over, and so that they are mostly submerged in the thinner. The bulk of the zip lock bag makes this easy with the right can as a holder.

Walk away.

Tomorrow you will return to a nearly perfectly clean brush. The thinner wicks the paint out of the bristles and the paint solids sink to the bottom of the zip-lock. Withdraw the brush from the zip lock gently so as not to disturb the sediment too much. Only the very tips of the bristles might need a little attention (because they are in the sediment at the bottom.) Either clean them in a new, clean zip lock with about a half ounce of new, clean thinner, or just do it the conventional way. The paint left at the tips is very thinned out by this time and it doesn’t take much effort either way. The tough part about brush cleaning; clearing out the paint that is all up in the tops of the bristles, is done.

If you are going to store the brush for a long period you may elect to clean out the thinner left in the bristles with detergent and water, but I have found that the bristles are clean enough that if you just set the brush aside until it is dried, then simply “limber up the bristles” you are good to go. I also don’t like putting natural bristles into water. It messes with them.

BUT WAIT! There is still more!

If you let the baggie with the used thinner sit again for a day propped up in the coffee can with the one corner low and the top sealed up, the paint solids once again sink to the bottom. Completely. Above the solids is crystal clear clean thinner. You can now decant off the clean thinner by snipping a little hole in the edge of the baggie just above the level of the clean thinner and gently pouring it into any suitable container. You can get most of it, but don’t push it too far or you will get the dregs stirred up and you don’t want that.

This decanted thinner is suitable for “rough cleaning” brushes another day or shop wipe-ups and the like. You probably shouldn’t thin paint with it, so don’t decant it back into the original can.

Taking this extra step saves only a few pennies, but for me the big benefit is it saves having to deal with hazardous waste disposal day at the dump. The solids left behind at the bottom of the bag will dry up in a day or so if you let the old bag sit open, and once dry they are no longer hazardous waste.

I stumbled across (into?) this system. I have used it now on several brushes and it seems to work remarkably well every time. Good brushes aren’t cheap, and good results require good brushes. It used to be that I’d occasionally get lazy or busy or rushed and not get my brush totally clean, and then when it dried it was pretty well ruined. Using this method I have yet to loose a single brush.

Give it a try on your next painting project.

Peter

[In Memory of Vicroy]

Or, if you plan to use the brush again within a few weeks with the same or similar paint, just put it in a zip lock and stick it in your freezer.

I'm a convert to the foam brushes tho. I'm a terrible painter and hate doing it. When I needed to paint my 1962 Whaler 13 last year, the Faithful here guided me through it and I used the Interlux one part paint system - primer, 333 reducer, and finish with foam brushes. As Gert's people know, the trick is the 7.5% reducer - results in zero brush marks if its all done at the proper temp and in fairly low humidity. My job turned out as well as if I'd had it sprayed and I still sahke my head when looking at the little boat. Like new.

And you toss the brush in the round file......

UV

[randall]

i might be a yankee but i do it the UV way. foam brushes- round file. looks like sprayed. all my art work is water based so its easy to clean.


neat trick.......if you figure out how to clean rollers let me know.