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I am having trouble getting the greenstuff out of my metal modeling files. I am worried that the caked on greenstuff is going to greatly lower the effectiveness of my files and I would like to keep my files nice. If anyone has file cleaning tips they would be greatly appreciated.

Wash with some solvent ? Acetone maybe? .... I dont know what dissolves greenstuff? but what ever does.. use that.

Had to go through this myself this morning, cleaning gunk out of one of my files.

I found that between some blue tack, soapy water, paper towels and very careful and tedious application of a knife blade I managed to get it fairly clean.

Basically I'd clean each groove as well as I could with the blade, then used blue tack to pick out the loosened gunk, then wash in water and dry with paper towel.

Thank you.

I use a boar brush (like the one that comes in a gun cleaning kit) to clean mine.

Any stiff wirebrush can do the job.

A good wire brush. Look for something at a hardware store. A welders brush works great.

I recommend a brass wire brush - a steel brush might damage the file teeth.

File it with another file.

Ghidorah

I use water and a steel wool sponge.

A file card and machine oil.

The file card is basically a wire brush with thousands of really closely spaced short stiff steel bristles. They are designed to clean files with. Hardware stores should have them. Oil of course is a lubricant to help get the GS out of the cracks and generally keep your files in good shape.

I normally will wipe the file with a cloth that has a fair amount of oil on it than scrape it across the card. After a few passes - little more oil and a few more passes. Usually only take a dozen or so passes to make it clean as new and the oil which remains will keep it from rusting.

I have this problem too and found a solution in woodworking. They use this odd rubbery stuff to clear sanding discs and belts. Well, it turns out that the same stuff is available for other uses. I found this a while back:

http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?ItemId=155893

The pics attached show it in action on a sanding stick but I can attest it works great on files, both machine and diamond. This stuff is AWESOME. No mess, fast, and lasts a long time. Just rub the offending file or sanding device and the bits disappear.