Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion cleaning old oil cans

any tips on cleaning up old oil cans. Found 10 old grease cans in 20's trucking warehouse, they are pretty dirty after 80 years of storage, painted cans not paper, dont want to mess them up, any ideas would be appreciated.

All the cans that I have cleaned, I used hand cleaner first. it removes all oils. there might be some parafins that it will not remove. then a nice carnuba car wax. always use cotton to wipe. old T-shirts are best. hope this helps.



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Dwaine

www.vintage-logos.com

yup.. just like Dwaine says but... don't use the cleaner with grit in it and don't faint if the paint turns a little milky white... the wax will really bring the color back.. also.. dump the grease outta them.. if you got this stuff in your house , like i do, you don't want them cans to weep and leave you with a mess... have fun...

kmann

Drain the oil cans? I would have thought it would hurt the value of the can. Im still new at this so maybe someone else could chime in on whether to drain or not to drain.

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-Dave-
Slowly progressing on a '54 Tokheim 39

if i'm not mistaken, dsmith first said oil cans then said old grease cans...so i went with GREASE cans.. there was some debate on the full versus empty OIL cans on oldgas not that long ago. seems that empty cans don't really hurt the value BUT its an individuals preferance. my preferance is to dump the contents.

kmann

Good NON-GRITTY car wax/cleaner for polishing and lots of good rags. Also invest in a small rotary tool, one from sears or a hardware store. These tools usually come with a variety of little cloth wheels which I use to clean the small detailed parts of the can. The finish is in the detail!!

thanks for all the good information, the grease cans are 5 and 3 quart panhandle refinery, Wichita Falls, Tx

Do you mean 3lb and 5lb??