Denatured Alcohol

[ShoreKasterHI]

Hi all, I was wondering if this if safe to clean grease of reels? I have a can thats been sitting from when i use to go bowling, we would sprinkle some on a rag and wipe the bowling ball after every throw so the ball would have some hook to it and not slide.

[kamuwela]

on metal it will be fine as for plastic id be careful first time around. i use wd40 by the gallon in a metal bowl and a solvent  brush and or tooth brush. home depot sells it for about 15 a gallon not sure how much the alcohol runs.

[ShoreKasterHI]

Ok i was just gonna use it on the internals since i have some just laying around and i dont use it anymore till i run out i'll look for a cheaper way.

[kamuwela]

should be fine on the nternals
                aloha
                kamu

[publius]

As for cleaning reels, I use the same thing I use on my guns(metal parts.) I use a solvent called Ed's Red. You make it yourself and it's very cheap (much cheaper than commercial gun solvents.) You can Google it and get the recipe. I liberally scrub everything with the Ed's and a toothbrush then blast it all off with Carb or brake cleaner which leaves a completely degreased clean surface. I then oil & grease appropriately. Denatured alcohol should work fine though.

[Rockfish1]

A number of today's reels have some plastic internals as well as metals, so the trick would be to cut grease/oil but not hurt any plastic the cleaner might come in contact with.

"Denatured" is a dog's breakfast of alcohols and not consistent from brand to brand or time to time within brand.  It is usually mostly either ethanol and/or methanol.....but usually also contains some acetates and/or ketones and thus dangerous with some plastics.  Solvency for hydrocarbons like grease/oil is fair. It's also called Methyl Hydrate in Canada.

Alan talks about using brake cleaner on bearings.....it's a hellish blend of solvents (CRC Brakleen is methanol, toluene, heptane, and acetone) with great solvency, but dangerous around many plastics for certain.  Best to keep it to metal only.  Great relatively cheap alternative if you never get near plastics.

Possibly the best thing for internals (albeit a bit expensive) could be electrical contact cleaner from somebody like CRC or Ideal....they are usually aliphatic hydrocarbons like heptanes - pretty good degreasers and safe for the great majority of plastics.  In fact I think I recall that CRC's QD contact cleaner says on the can it's safe with plastics.