Happy Sunday! I’ve been wrenching hard on a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee that hasn’t been on the road in eight years, and frankly, it’s been kicking my arse. As such, I haven’t had a ton of time to write weekend blogs, so here’s a short one about how I clean my hands when they’re covered in oil and grease.
Some wrenchers use rubber gloves when they work on cars, and frankly: I wish I were one of them. From a health standpoint, it’d be nice to not have lead-filled used oil and brake fluid and gasoline and all that leaching through my skin and into my bloodstream. But gloves ruin tactile feedback, and make it hard for me to know what’s going on in whatever blind nook and cranny I’m reaching into, so I’ve come to grips with the reality that in my old age, I’ll transform into something part-human, part-American Motors inline-six.
The result is that my hands get dirty a lot, and my brothers and mom regularly get on my case about how, really, I should wear gloves. Again, they’re right! But I lose all the feeling with that thin layer of rubber! I can’t deal with it.
[Ed note:
-MH]
Anyway, I’ve for years been trying various hand-cleaning methods, and I’ve narrowed down what works best. This is something that wrenchers are very opinionated about, so my solution may not be your favorite (you can tell me what is in the comments), but trust me when I say: It works really well.
For me, I use three products. First off, there’s Dawn Dish Soap. Yes, just regular Dawn, and no, standard-issue dish-soap doesn’t work as well.
I do find it bizarre how Dawn legitimately works better than the competition, because can’t the competition just copy Dawn’s formula? I’m sure some have, but most non-Dawn dish soaps just don’t seem to be able to get the grease and grime off my hands like that Bottle Of Blue can. It’s cheap, it’s readily available all over the place, it smells good, and you know it’s safe since it’s been used for a long time in kitchens around the globe.
The very best hand-cleaner I’ve ever used, though, is GoJo (or similar brands).
The key, here, is to get the original formula, and not the one with pumice in it. I realize how controversial this is, and I get how fun it is to have that gritty pumice rubbing between your hands, but the reality is that you’re basically trying to clean two smooth leather surfaces; smooth, pumice-free cleaner will work great. Now, there are very specific instances where pumice can help (like if you get RTV silicone stuck on your hands; the GoJo above probably won’t take that off), but besides that, it’s the smooth hand-cleaner that really works well for me. I mean, look at it go!:
I’m actually using Purple Power hand cleaner in the photo above; I find that it, Goop, and GoJo all work similarly well (though I prefer GoJo for no real reason).
What I like about these cleaners over Dawn is that they don’t require water to work. You can just have a can of GoJo in your toolbox, along with some shop towels (I love those blue ones above), and you’re pretty much all set.
Last but not least, there’s the fingernail brush, because grime will get under your nails, and neither Dawn nor GoJo will help extract it. You need something to get underneath those nails, and I (and I think most wrenchers) have found that a brush works best.
My hands are squeaky clean right now after having been filthy from tearing apart a four-liter Jeep engine last night. I can thank both Dawn and that Purple Power hand cleaner — along with those blue shop towels and a fingernail brush (I used an old toothbrush).
[Ed note: David made sure I put in Amazon affiliate links for these products because we might get a tiny commission from it. Seriously, these are like $10 for enough GoJo to last you, like, three Jeeps. So, yes, please click those links and get some GoJo and maybe a Roku streambar? Oh, you don’t need Roku streambar? Ok, fair enough – MH]
Tip: if you’re working on oily stuff out in the field (on a ride/drive/camping whatever) then a good handful of grass (lawn / roadside grass) will scrub your hands clean better than you’d think, especially if it’s wet.
Otherwise: Swarfega.
I like the idea of going ves but also don’t like using them,starting a blind nut by feel or whatever isn’t the same. I was actually a little shocked when I read several years ago that motor oil is somewhat toxic, I can’t begin to count the times my hand have been soaked in it.
These days I try to use gloves for small jobs, who wants to spend ten minutes washing up after a 30 minute job?
For bigger jobs the gloves inevitably tear or I need to take them off for some reason and eventually I say screw it and just keep going without.
Dawn is good, I have never really had a problem with my hands getting dry unless I am doing a lot of bodywork and wet sanding. Just lucky that way I guess.
Luckily I’ve been a nitrile glove user from day one, I just made it a habit early on so it doesn’t bother me to wear gloves. I hate having my hands dirty, and even with an arsenal of hand cleaners my skin gets stained and looks dirty for a while if I do any bare-handed wrenching. I also spend way too long cleaning parts and my work areas, arguably more time than I spend on the wrenching itself. Thankfully I’m not a technician anymore, so I don’t have to do any wrenching unless I need to do so on my own car.
Do your hands a favor and moisturize them afterwards, otherwise your skin will dry out and that can lead to dermatitis and/or eczema.
I prefer canola oil as its cheap and probably right there in your kitchen already. Coconut oil is also excellent.
Food oils IMO are better than petroleum oils as they are a bit less slippery and obviously are biocompatible. They soak in faster too.
Dunno about rubber gloves (presumably you mean latex?) but nitrile gloves work pretty well with nary any loss of tactility, even in the 7 mil or 9 mil thickness (5 mil and thinner tend to just get shredded; few things are more annoying than putting on gloves only to have them rip the first second you touch something under the hood, ha.)
On account of being vegan (30 years as of last February!) I don’t use lanolin, tallow, or other animal products in my cleaning products; as someone who frequently wrenches on leaky old diesels (IYKYK but for those who don’t know, sooty diesel oil tends to be pretty damn tenacious and tends to be harder to wash out than garden-variety gasoline oil) such as my late and lamented ’85 VW Jetta 1.6D (totalled last summer by some damn schmuck running a red light) and my kid’s ’83 Mercedes 300TD which I am now DD’ing I’ve found the following to work extremely well:
Pretty much any good quality vegetable/citrus-based dish soap works just fine, especially if you vigorously rub a decent amount on your *dry* hands before using water, and then using a nail brush sourced from any artist’s supply store. One brand I’ve found to work especially well is Ecover, with lemon, which can be found in some food coops, health food stores, and many grocery stores though it may not always be easy to track down.
The Grandpa Soap Company, in Kentucky, makes an excellent pine tar soap which can be found in some food coops and high-end grocery stores; it also may not always be easy to track down. Kinda pricey but well worth it, highly recommended.
Phil Wood & Co, an old American bicycle component manufacturer based in San Jose, California, makes the best hand cleaner goop I’ve ever come across, hands down (ha), though it’s not always in stock even on their website; it’s pine-based and is called…Phil Wood Hand Cleaner.
https://phil-wood-co.myshopify.com/collections/lubricants-and-cleaners/products/phil-wood-hand-cleaner
Yeah, I like the smell of pine, lol. It was indeed a sad day when the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority’s cable car system switched from pine tar to synthetic lubricants for the cables though at least there’s still the occasional whiff of pine or at least pine-adjacent thanks to the cable cars still using Monterey Fir blocks for their track brakes.
So here’s a question. Would you recommend gojo after a timing belt job? What about timing chain service?
More seriously: if you lose feeling with gloves on, they’re the wrong size, probably too big.
Hmmm I remember my dad using Petrol and/or turpentine to clean his hands, then he’d use some weird yellowy cleaner to get the petrol off (something he nicked from work most likely) – upshot, for a man who had always worked with his hands, they were always remarkably clean.
That yellowy stuff was probably Lanolin, which is in GoJo. My dad’s workplace had the same thing.
If you want to upgrade your nail brush, I highly recommend these:
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/home/personal-care/nail-brushes/10259-the-worlds-kindest-nail-brush
Don’t forget the UK equivalent to Dawn, Fairy Liquid.
“Hands that wash dishes can feel soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid.”
Hands as soft as my face will need some sandpaper
My dad had access to all kinds of chemicals at work, and brought home 5 gallons of MEK for cleaning parts. I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to get it on your hands (it was the 70s, nobody cared), but it sure cleaned them up real nice!
In my experience MEK can trigger dermatitis if you’re not careful.
I’d rather keep my hands dirty than douse them in MEK. Dermatitis SUCKS!
Dawn dish soap, about a tablespoon of sugar and hot water that’s all you need.
The sugar will dissolve in either of those.
Better to start with sugar in food oil (canola, olive, coconut, vegetable, whatever you have). Sugar will stay granular in oil and act as an abrasive while the oil both dissolves dirty oil and grease while also moisturizing.
Then use the Dawn and hot water and finally chase it with a bit more oil to both moisturize and calm the skin after so much abuse.
Been doing it for 30 years bro. You slick up your hands with Dawn dish soap and a little bit of water and then have somebody sprinkle sugar over them and then scrub. Rinse with hot water it works just fine and leaves your hands nice and soft.
If you put in enough sugar. If that’s what works for you and if your skin can handle it then you do you.
I’m not really sure what your argument is or why you’ve chosen this hill to die on, you’re going to have maybe a tablespoon of soap on your hands. It’s not going to dissolve a tablespoon of sugar. Seriously try it sometime. Works great.
I have. Dawn and hot water are too good at degreasing for my aged skin. It was fine when I was younger but as my skin has matured Dawn and hot water started triggering skin problems like contact dermatitis and eczema flareups that could last for weeks. It got so bad even just trying to get grease off with hot water alone was enough to trigger, never mind the Dawn. Once started the rashes were hard to get rid of. It was a miserable experience which made me dread any kind of wrenching.
That’s why I’m on about the cooking oil. In my experience the oil dissolves auto grease quite well all on its own without dissolving the sugar. The cooking oil also replaces skin oils so the skin isn’t left raw and dried out in the end.
Once I started using oil those issues mostly disappeared. It’s so effective even immersion in acetone and vinegar don’t trigger those issues as long as the areas are wiped with oil within a few minutes.
I now use Dawn as a backup for the toughest grease. If Dawn and hot water work for you that’s wonderful but if you find your skin starts reacting badly to their use try adding a bit of oil too. It works!
I refuse to touch anything oily or greasy without gloves on. I’ve been using the gloves for 30 years now. I remember having nasty stained hands and nails as a kid, never again.
Today I learned there are brushes specifically for your fingernails–good to know!
Today? Are you 6?
Some of us thought fingernail brushes were something for manicures.
I just didn’t know there were specialized brushes for specific parts of the body beyond the hair on your head
I saw something in the aisle at ACE one day called “invisible glove” one day and bought it as a joke. It actually works! I guess it’s like a water soluble ceramic coating for your hands. Somehow after a long day of wrenching when you go to wash your hands with just ordinary hand soap everything just comes right off most of the time, some times you do have to use the dawn ULTRA (key qualifier which David left off) to finish the job.
Still have to deal with the fingernails, but I’ve tried to view it as an excuse to replace my toothbrush more frequently.
Oh oh, one super clutch Dawn use: cleaning off your eyeglasses. I was spring cleaning my angle grinder today and got a hearty chunk of iron/aluminum/refractory cement, all held together by what I can only describe as “glump,” right on the lens.
Get a good lather going, wet the lenses, and go to town. Doesn’t mess up UV or transitions coatings or anything, and as a bonus you’ll probably end up cleaning your filthy, filthy nose pads in the process.
i’m not sure non-glasses wearers understand a) how much of a pain a grease smear is on a lens and b) how grimy those nose pads can get, lol.
Oh that reminds me, I really should clean the bridge of my glasses…
Good one. I clean mine that way at least once a week – the dishsoap nicely removes all the oils that get in there from your fingers, your face, etc. so they’re even less likely to smudge.
I just take my glasses off and wash them with regular soap while washing my hands.
My friend’s dad had this stuff, never found anything else as good:
yes, it was an Avon product…
https://grumpsgarage.com/product/quaker-state-avon-hand-cleaner/
Project Farm just did a comparison last week. GoJo Orange came out in the top 3.
Project Farm channel is great testing all sorts of good car stuff. Hand cleaners last week, mechanics creepers the week before plus jack stands and battery chargers fairly recently.
I’ve found that cheap shampoo works well and doesn’t screw up my skin.
vegetable oil. no seriously. slather hands with vegetable oil without water and dry with paper towels. It will get 95% of grime off without scrubbing and drying your hands out. Then just wash your hands with regular soap and water.
This. Add a bit of sugar if you want an abrasive, then rinse with water. The sugar will dissolve in the water so no residual grit.
When it comes to serious under the fingernails cleaning…
Nothing beats scratching on a hard, sacrificial bar of soap.
A always keep a pack of baby wipes in the tool box. They have a mild soap and will remove a good bit of grime from hands and tools. Not as harsh as the citrus based cleaners.
All this talk of cleaning grease-filth off your hands and not one caution about doing it in your (or worse, your partner’s) white porcelain bathroom sink?
This is why I have a dedicated stainless former kitchen sink in the utility room with those big elbow-activated paddle knobs.
That thin layer of rubber may reduce your sensitivity, but you should be able to wrench longer…
What you did there, I see it.
Why bother with extending your wrenching sessions when you can get the job done more quickly. More abruptly, with a little practice.
But is that what your partn-oops, I mean your car wants?
It will kill your sensitivity and you’ll lose interest then fall asleep on the job.
What were we talking about again?
I’ve been wrenching for over 60 years and just can’t get used to doing it with gloves on. Maybe if you start using them as a kid it works? Sounds like David has the same view of the world.
I only started using level4 cut gloves around middle age. You can learn—and not having my hands covered with slow-healing little cuts all winter is way worth it!
Exfoliating soap bag and your favorite bar of soap. It’s cheap, washable, and better than any oil cleaning product I’ve used.
You just made me remember that my sister had some exfoliating body wash that was excellent at cleaning my hands. Smelt a bit too…say, frilly, for me, though.
Thanks: I remember going out with friends after washing with that & the ribbing I took 🙂