melted plastic removal

Chambers

Chambers

Joined
Jul 11, 2001
Messages
1,137
I can't remember now what the hell I was doing with it at the time but somehow I managed to get melted plastic on the reamer of my SAK. It's that nasty black wad at the end of the blade and now naturally it's fairly useless. I hesitate to buy a new one simply because I put a lot of mileage on my old one and want to save it for the sentimental value. So my question is how the heck does one clean that crap off? Do I need to re-heat it? How about taking another knife and trying to sort of carve it off? Any ideas and suggestions are appreciated as I really like my SAK and want to see it back up to it's old self.
 
I don't know what kind of plastic you got on there, but, try this..
Try freezing it and see if the plastic gets hard enought to chip off.
Try holding the goo in boiling water to soften and remove.
Make a scraper out of a piece of copper, scrap copper pipe, penny etc. Use a file to "sharpen" the copper...scrape away without fear of hurting the steel.
WITHOUT getting it on the handle, soak the offending goo in fingernail polish or other solvent...
Good luck..

I started with the easiest....
 
I'd go with the freezing, then carefully whack it with a hammer. Next I would carefully put it on my grinder or sander.
 
If the junk is not sticky (which is likely for most plastics) you can probably whittle it off with a small knife blade. If it is really hard (such as some glass-filled adhesives) it might help if you heated the stuff with boiling water then whittle with a knife. If it is a tarry substance like asphalt or some rubbery plastics then heating will make it stickier and therefore harder to cleanly remove. If it is sticky/tarry try using a solvent like turpentine, paint or laquer thinner and steel wool. Be careful not to get solvent on the plastic handle of the knife.
 
I was about to say FIRE!

Then I realized that you have to:

1. hold it
2. have alox scales
3. have heat treated (of sorts) other stuff right beside it...

I'd try whiddling like the other guys suggested :D
 
Can't imagine any plastic would adhere to steel so tenaciously that you couldn't scrape it off fairly easily. Curious what this plastic is.

As others have suggested, you can go after it with any metal that's softer than steel: copper, brass, aluminum, zinc, etc. If for some reason that doesn't work, or doesn't get it all, you might try acetone to dissolve/soften it. If you don't have acetone handy, you might try putting some PVC cement or other solvent-based glue on it to soften it; this should work with polystyrene, ABS, vinyls, but not polyethylene or polypropylene (neither of which should be stuck like that to steel, I wouldn't think.)

If you wind up with just a small bit of residue left to remove steel wool or Scotch-Brite should finish it up.

I'm sure with a little persistence it'll come off.
 
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