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Blade Cleaning and Care I don’t have time to clean my blades! How many times have you heard or said that? If I told you a way to save sharpening costs would you be interested? Clean and oil your blades! It is amazing how much gunk a blade accumulates in just an hour between the cool sprays, oil and dirt from the animal, heat generated by the blade, etc. As this gunk builds up a few things start to happen. 1) The blade starts to not cut like it should. The blades are being held slightly apart by the gunk so they are not cutting anymore, but instead are pulling the hair. 2) The blades get hotter faster. This can also be from blade tension. When a blade is harder to move it will heat up quicker. 3) Clipper starts to slow down or get hot. This is due to the clipper having to work harder to keep the blade moving. Usually when a blade starts to not work right, some will reach for the cooling sprays. They spray the blade and it speeds up and starts cutting again. What has happened is the gunk had been diluted and some has been removed, but will soon build up even worse than before. These sprays get sticky like hair spray once they dry. Now think how sticky hair spray is and how hard a clipper must work to keep the blade moving. Some of the Cooling cans now say to re oil the blade after using them. One thing that happens when using the sprays is the oil is removed from the blade guide (plastic piece on top of the small blade) and this will create more friction, which results in more heat generated and more wear on the clipper. Sometimes you will hear a high pitch squeak on the faster clippers. This is the blade guide. It is important to keep this well oiled all the time. You may have to put a couple of drops on it once an hour or more. This depends on how much of the cooling stuff you use. It does not take a lot of oil to keep a blade working, but you have to do it regularly. What type of blade cleaner to use. Some take the blade apart and use soap and water, dry completely and re oil. Some use a commercial product of some type and re oil. I have even seen a mixture of mineral spirits and motor oil. I know it works, but why do you want to put motor oil on an animal and take a chance of skin irritations or worse. The commercial product I like is the H-42. It has a rust inhibitor, kills stuff, has some oil in it, and smells good. It does come in a spray bottle so you can use it as you are grooming. You still have to re oil the blade. The cheapest blade cleaner is rubbing alcohol. It cleans well, dries fast so you can re oil and get going again. Do not put hot blades in rubbing alcohol! This is for cool blades only. Rubbing alcohol does not disinfect blades either, so you will have to use something for this. How often do I clean my blades? At least once a day. If you don’t feel like cleaning the blades at the end of the day, then take a brush and get most of the hair out of the teeth and use the blower to get the rest of the hair out and place the blades into a caddy of H-42. In the morning run the blades in the solution according to the directions on the bottle and re oil the blade. Place oil on all of the contact areas: blade guide, teeth and on each side of the back rail. You need only a drop on the teeth and rail, but a several on the blade guide. If a blade is left dirty it can cause rusting and pitting of the cutting area and shorten the life of the blade.
Tips
on when to clean and re oil a
blade:
Blade cleaning procedure: Using Blades On Different Clippers I am often asked if you can use Oster blades on Andis Clippers, Wahl blades on Oster, etc. The answer is yes, but there is one problem, hinge assemblies on clippers are not equal width. I have found Oster has the smallest width hinge on the market so far and Oster is the industry standard that every manufacturer tries to match as close as possible. So if you put a blade on an Andis clipper and then put it on an Oster, it will sound noisy and not cut well. You put it back on the Andis and it cuts again so you think the Oster clipper is bad. What is happening is the Andis hinge is just slightly wider and spreads the ears apart, so when it is put back on an Oster it makes a loud noise. Even new blades from all manufactures rattle on that manufactures clippers right from the package. When I get new blades I adjust the sockets to fit an Oster and test cut with them to make sure they are working correctly. The blades will be snug the first time they go on a clipper other than Oster, but then they will then fit that clipper perfectly. Even switching between the same brand clippers can cause the ears on the sockets to spread. Hinges wear overtime so a newer hinge will spread the socket the same as if you switched to another brand. One way groomers have gotten around this problem is they designate certain blades to be used on certain clippers. This helps keep blades from spreading as easily. Others have learned how to adjust the sockets themselves. This is good skill to learn because some sharpeners might use a different clipper than you and spread the ears during their test and then when you put it on your clipper it rattles and won’t cut. Also the ears can spread in between sharpenings and this make you think the blade is dull when it is not. So learning this skill is can be very valuable. I have made a gauge block to set the socket the same every time and have found this to be very useful in not over adjusting the ears. In the next issue I will talk about different blade noises, causes of the noise, and how to solve them.
Why
do my blades get hot so fast? “Why do my blades get hot so fast now?” is the most asked question that I hear. I will cover some of the reasons for blades heating up and how to prevent it. The biggest reason for hot blades is the clippers are faster now. Most clippers were about 2000 spm (strokes per minute), and now they are 4000 plus spm. This is like going from a moped to a high performance car. With the added speed you get more heat. What is the best way to keep two metal parts from heating up…LUBRICATION! Keeping your blades clean and lubed will increase the life of your blades and clipper. To help illustrate this point, rub your hands together slowly. You will start to feel a little warmth, but not anything unbearable. Now rub your hands together faster. The heat is more intense and is generated quicker. After a minute or so they start to feel sticky. Now if you put some lotion on and do this again your hands stay much cooler and are easier to rub to together. When I do this experiment with people they usually say “I use one of the cooling/lube/etc sprays.” That is great, but it is hard to have a product that can cool/lube/clean equally. The spray products are not intended to take the place of regular cleaning and oiling. They are to help you get through grooming that animal as quickly as possible. The sprays naturally dry out the blade guide (plastic part on top of the blade). The sprays contain some type of cleaner, which is for removing oil, so all the oil is sucked out of the plastic blade guide. When this happens you will hear a high pitch squeak from the dry plastic rubbing on the steel. Also the blade will seem to cut slower from the increased friction. To get the guide roiled may take several drops of oil. Once the guide is re-oiled, the clipper will speed up again and the heat will be less. The greatest cause of blade heat is from the blade guide being dry and increased clipper speed. The sprays also leave a sticky residue after the blade runs for a while. When the blade starts to slow down again and not cut, it is the spray getting sticky again. When you re-spray it, this loosens up the sticky stuff so the blade speeds up again. An example of this is when you spray a hot pan with cooking spray. When the cooking spray hits the hot pan it sizzles, then gets brown and sticky. The spray now has a crusty appearance and does not coat the pan as it should. When blades have dirt/gunk in them, this will cause the two cutting surfaces not to meet. If the blades are continually run in this condition the gunk bakes on the blades. A lot of blades are not really dull when a sharpener gets them, but are in need of a good cleaning. The sharpening process removes all the gunk and gives you two new clean surfaces that will mate correctly with less friction. Dirty blades get hotter faster, which can remove the “temper” of the blade. Temper is the hardness of the blade and its ability to hold an edge. When the Super fast clippers (5-10,000 spm) first came out, I was getting blades in that were blue from the overheating of the blades and also had this brown tinge to them from the cooling sprays. The solution given to help with the extreme heating problem was to loosen the tension of the blade, which does help to generate less heat, but can create a new problem of blades “catching” the hair. By “catching”, I mean you make one swipe and the blade quits, then you slide the cutter to remove the hair stuck between the blade teeth. The reason the hair is “catching” is the blade is separating just enough to not allow the hair to cut, so it wraps around the teeth instead. Sharpeners do try to set the blades as light as possible, but not so light as to cause this problem. Another problem of too loose of tension is screws in the blades vibrate out because there is not enough tension to hold them securely. As a blade gets hot, it can quit working, but will usually start working again once it cools off. The reason for this is when metal heats up it expands, which creates more friction. The clipper can’t move the blade as fast so it seems to be dull. How many times have you handed a blade to the sharpening person and they test it and it works? The easiest way to help with the blade heat problem is to have 3 or 4 of the same number blade and rotate them out when they get warm. Some people put them on a piece of tile, in a window or under a fan to let them cool while they continue to work. The customers I have that do this increase the time between sharpenings dramatically. Some people say it waste time to keep switching out blades, but when you look at how much slower and harder you have to work with hot blades it is actually faster. The Clipper Vac® systems really help keep blades cool, but they also give a false sense of not having to oil blades. Anytime two pieces of metal rub together they will need to be lubed. Think of the blade as a mini engine. If you don’t keep the engine oiled it will seize up and be costly to replace or repair. By keeping your equipment well lubed and clean, will greatly decrease your maintenance cost and amount of sharpenings you should need. Copyright 2007 Find A Groomer Inc. All rights reserved |
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