jpietrella: My hand-cleaning journey (1 Viewer)

jpietrella

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I've recently decided that cleaning via ultrasonic is too harsh, so I've taken up cleaning my chips by hand. After some fantastic recommendations by @Ben8257, the results so far are very positive.

Planning on using this thread to document/share this process and post any cleaning progress/photos/questions.

First up: Joker's Wild $1s.

These have got to be the most disgusting chips I've seen or handled in-person. They cleaned up pretty well though and once they're oiled they should be pretty great. I'm still looking for 60 more $5s to complete a rack if anyone is interested in helping.

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I've recently decided that cleaning via ultrasonic is too harsh, so I've taken up cleaning my chips by hand. After some fantastic recommendations by @Ben8257, the results so far are very positive.

Planning on using this thread to document/share this process and post any cleaning progress/photos/questions.

First up: Joker's Wild $1s.

These have got to be the most disgusting chips I've seen or handled in-person. They cleaned up pretty well though and once they're oiled they should be pretty great. I'm still looking for 60 more $5s to complete a rack if anyone is interested in helping.

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Those JW $1s are terrible man! If you can get through hand cleaning them you can clean just about anything!! Looking forward to seeing this set when it comes together.

Long Live Red and Green $1s!! Haha
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But I love them when they are finished!!
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Good luck buddy!!
 
Those JW $1s are terrible man! If you can get through hand cleaning them you can clean just about anything!! Looking forward to seeing this set when it comes together.

Long Live Red and Green $1s!! Haha
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But I love them when they are finished!!
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Good luck buddy!!
Also I meant to say that you are brave to handle those things with your bare hands in the water. I felt douchey wearing latex gloves but after 4 hours of cleaning and seeing the water, my hands were thankful.
 
Also I meant to say that you are brave to handle those things with your bare hands in the water. I felt douchey wearing latex gloves but after 4 hours of cleaning and seeing the water, my hands were thankful.
Brie wears gloves, I do not. I clean chips for hours every single day bro. Oxyclean and dish soap has been soaking in for almost 2 years now, my hands are leather and just stay water logged now! Haha
 
I actually don't mind it that much, it's just time consuming and takes up a bunch of space. The biggest challenge is finding the time since it takes so long, but if I can do that, I throw on a podcast or something and just kind of zone out.
 
My compromise between ultrasonic and hand-cleaning involves use of a cheap salad spinner. I fill it about half way up with a ratio of 1.5 tablespoons of faux (Lundmark) TSP and 10 cups of hot (but not scalding hot) water. Put 100-140 chips in at a time and agitate for two minutes with the spinner. About halfway through I stop and use a spoon to mix the chips a bit in case some are stuck together.

The basket makes it very easy to lift out the chips for rinsing. Then I lay them out to dry, and usually lightly oil. I hand-rub these with a dry cloth while watching TV after they’ve sat a while.

I find this method gets 95% or more of each batch perfectly clean. There are sometimes a few that need some attention with a toothbrush/dental pick.

Only caveat is that worm hotstamps will sometimes fade more. Intact hotstamps don’t seem as prone to fading.

This is a very efficient option if one isn’t prepared to do individual cleanings.
 
Yeah I'll have to give the salad spinner method a whirl. Unfortunately, pretty much all 3 racks of these $1s require some individual attention and I've had to take a dental pick to every single one so far. It's only about 45 seconds per chip after letting them soak for about 7 minutes, I think the oxi and nail brush do a lot of the heavy lifting.

I've got a few more racks of PBCL $25 that need some love but are nowhere near as dirty as these $1s, so I may try out your method described above on those.

But for now, oxi, palm olive, a nail brush, dental pick and magic eraser work absolute wonders.
 
My orange and blue JWs took the U/S bath (like many of my chips). I'm lucky in that the worst damage I've done is produce chips that need a little oil. Still, your method is so nice. Dental picking each one after a nice soak. Just take up so much time. It's a level of madness I haven't reached yet.
 
My orange and blue JWs took the U/S bath (like many of my chips). I'm lucky in that the worst damage I've done is produce chips that need a little oil. Still, your method is so nice. Dental picking each one after a nice soak. Just take up so much time. It's a level of madness I haven't reached yet.
It does take time, but it's not as terrible as I thought it would be. Once you kind of get into a groove, it goes pretty fast per chip and I imagine it's even better for chips that aren't super disgusting with huge chunks of hooker juice caked on. I've tried to do it while either catching up on a TV show or listening to a podcast and that kind of makes the time fly by. I am happy with the results though!
 
Impressive man, thanks for posting your cleaning adventures. You're doing it the exact way I was doing it. Throw the podcast on and zone the F out and scrub scrub scrub. Recently I decided to use one of these guys while cleaning some hot stamp Empress roulettes and Empress 5s with nice results, it's a little easier on the hand too.
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I haven't noticed and damage to chips but the chips I started with were quite worn as is.
 
Impressive man, thanks for posting your cleaning adventures. You're doing it the exact way I was doing it. Throw the podcast on and zone the F out and scrub scrub scrub. Recently I decided to use one of these guys while cleaning some hot stamp Empress roulettes and Empress 5s with nice results, it's a little easier on the hand too.
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I haven't noticed and damage to chips but the chips I started with were quite worn as is.
Oh that's great. I might try one of those out. For the most part, I used a super cheap nail brush, which works great. However, I did alternate with trying one of those ultrasonic dish brushes that everyone seems keen on using. It worked pretty well, though these disgusting things still required a bit of pressure to get the big chunks off.
 
Oh that's great. I might try one of those out. For the most part, I used a super cheap nail brush, which works great. However, I did alternate with trying one of those ultrasonic dish brushes that everyone seems keen on using. It worked pretty well, though these disgusting things still required a bit of pressure to get the big chunks off.
Yeah, the brush I was using was old and started disintegrating so I just tried this guy out because I had one and it seemed to do a nice job. I think my least favorite part is using a magic eraser, honestly. Those things like to tear and fall apart pretty easy and this wand thing does a similar job. There are still a few chips that needed care but I'm happy with it and probably continue to use it on the remaining 5s I need to clean.
 
I'm a bug fan of hand washing with landmark tsp for dirty paulsons. Very little scrubbing has been needed because it dissolves the grease. Love the salad spinner idea make give that a go.
 
Yeah, the brush I was using was old and started disintegrating so I just tried this guy out because I had one and it seemed to do a nice job. I think my least favorite part is using a magic eraser, honestly. Those things like to tear and fall apart pretty easy and this wand thing does a similar job. There are still a few chips that needed care but I'm happy with it and probably continue to use it on the remaining 5s I need to clean.
Yuuuuup. The magic eraser pads work great, but they fall apart quickly which is really annoying.
 
Hand cleaning is slow but not terrible. I started cleaning racks of chips recently. I found the letting them soak for a couple hours first help dissolve the grease and grime, and then a nylon brush gets all the nooks and crannies quick and easy. Yeah, that water gets GROSS after just a couple racks.
 
Hand cleaning is slow but not terrible. I started cleaning racks of chips recently. I found the letting them soak for a couple hours first help dissolve the grease and grime, and then a nylon brush gets all the nooks and crannies quick and easy. Yeah, that water gets GROSS after just a couple racks.
Except if you soak too long the water can get under the label and discolor it, which I found out on a few chips I let soak too long. I would say anything over 5-10 mins is not good, but that's only been my experience.
 
Except if you soak too long the water can get under the label and discolor it, which I found out on a few chips I let soak too long. I would say anything over 5-10 mins is not good, but that's only been my experience.
labeled or inlayed? I havent seen any problems yet, but I'll keep that in mind.
 
What "detergent" are you using in the ultrasonic? What are you seeing in your results that lead you to the conclusion that it is harsh? My experience years ago before using an ultrasonic was that hand washing with oxyclean was too harsh... faded the reds etc.
 
I got great results on a rack of dirty black/leaded chips that had whitening on them as well through just soap/water, magic erasers (x2), and a toothbrush. I share the sentiment that the magic eraser got filthy and broke apart relatively quick, but despite being worried it lost effectiveness, it still worked wonders once the oiling stage finished. I am probably going to try that brush Jim shared a picture of for next time though, since I did not have to deal with much hooker juice and will probably have to go through numerous erasers if I did.
 
You'll start to see discoloration around the edges of the inlay, like this...View attachment 660786
These are not from me cleaning but looks the same.
Can confirm! I had a couple of damaged chips that I tested this with because I was curious. I had been told not to soak them for more than 10 minutes and I wanted to see what happened if I left them in longer. I think I left the test chips in for about 35-40 minutes and I got the same result as Jim's chips above; subtle but noticeable yellowing around the edges.
 
Can you elaborate on what makes ultrasonic cleaning harsh? Does it have a greater impact on colors at all? Or wear down the surface of the chips or impact on the inlay?

I hand cleaned some chips with dawn dish soap, toothbrush, and lukewarm water. The chips seemed to have faded but oiling brought it back. Same thing with ultrasonic cleaning with sodium metasillicate. Chips seem faded but brought back to life with some oil. Not sure if one technique lead to more fading vs the other.
 
I'm no expert but I'm pretty certain the US wears the chip material down. At least all of the threads that I've read through suggest this, which is why you're not supposed to leave them in for too long.

I do notice that chips that have been cleaned by the ultrasonic seems to be more "porous" for lack of a better word.

I haven't noticed it on my chips but others have reported the fading of colors for chips cleaned with an ultrasonic for too long or multiple times.
 

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