If you like clean cymbals - Huge shout out to Bar Keepers Friend - **Now with VIDEO**

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Cliff DeArment said:
The main ingredient of BKF is Oxalic Acid (OA), a very strong corrosive acid. With vintage cymbals (I'd say early 60's and older) I wouldn't get even near it. People use it all the time, but there are other options. Ok, it might take longer to clean it, but at what cost? There are reasons why Zildjian, Paiste, etc. don't sell cleaners with OA in it.

According to a hazardous substance fact sheet:


(From .pdf above: Exposure to Oxalic Acid can cause headache, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, convulsions, coma and even death.)
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Ah my old friend MSDS. I wouldn’t use that either.

edit - sorry. It was late. I shouldn’t assume.

Material
Safety
Data
Sheet
 
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Cliff DeArment said:
The main ingredient of BKF is Oxalic Acid (OA), a very strong corrosive acid. With vintage cymbals (I'd say early 60's and older) I wouldn't get even near it. People use it all the time, but there are other options. Ok, it might take longer to clean it, but at what cost? There are reasons why Zildjian, Paiste, etc. don't sell cleaners that include OA. Think about it.... who knows better? Zildjian, or you.

______________________________________________

According to a hazardous substance fact sheet:


(From .pdf above: Exposure to Oxalic Acid can cause headache, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, convulsions, coma and even death.)
Click to expand...
To be fair, most companies that sell specialized cleaners for their products just put common cleaners in bottles with their logos on them and charge a lot more.
 
JimmyM said:
To be fair, most companies that sell specialized cleaners for their products just put common cleaners in bottles with their logos on them and charge a lot more.
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Of course. The point is... what NOT to put in the cleaner.

To add, in the 60's Avedis said to never use acid, only alkaline (Comet, etc.). I would bet Zildjian's cleaner is alkaline. In some cases if we have to use some acid there are much milder options than BKF. If people really like to use a hard acid, have at it.
 
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Now that I'm thinking BKF... If you go to a really old bar and look at the brass, it's usually a little yellow. That's BKF. It does the same thing with a cymbal. The more you use it the more yellow it will look. I have a lot of old cymbals and it's kinda easy to tell the difference between people who have used a lot of BKF or not.
________________

Kinda out of context, one of the reasons I know a little about BKF is from restoring vintage bikes. Sometimes to cut through the rust OA is the only way to get it off. If you let it sit too long (which I have) it goes bright yellow. In this case it's iron and it will never change that color. I had to throw away a set of vintage chrome wheels for that! Grrrrrrr
 
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Okay, lots of concern out there. Thanks for the warning, guys. If you don’t want to clean your cymbals with BKF, by all means find another way or just don’t clean them at all. That’s a perfectly normal choice as well.

As for me, BKF is the new go to for cleaning cymbals. It’s quick, it’s easy, it doesn’t remove logos (at least that has not been my experience) and it doesn’t change the sound of them. I have no concerns about its acidic nature because it is only on the cymbal for 10-15 seconds then it is washed off. I don’t see this stuff causing any issues to the metal with such short amounts of exposure time.
 
Tommy D said:
It hard to say if the sound of this ‘70s ride got brighter from cleaning or not. It still sounds like it did previously, at least the characteristics of the sound are the same, but it did seem to add a bit of shimmer on top, which I feel complimented the overall slightly higher pitched nature of the cymbal. With the extra grime on the cymbal it sounded like the cymbal was fighting itself n its sound. It was a somewhat dull stick sound with a bright wash and a brighter crash sound. Now that stick sound has opened up a bit and is blending into the wash a lot better. The crash sound is the same overall but the cymbal itself sound a lot more in-tune with itself. If that makes sense.

Honestly, I don’t see how cleaning a dirty cymbal is going to ruin a cymbal, even one that has 50 years of grime on it. I guess if you are 100% happy with the sound of your cymbals and don’t care about their appearance, then don’t clean them. No one should be bothered by that. I happen to like my cymbals looking and sounding exactly as they did when they were new, so that means they need to be clean. If I don’t like the sound when it’s clean, then I may try adding tape or other damping materials to it, but if that doesn’t help, it’s sold off.
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Well, I picked up a ping ride super cheap and the shimmer on top was nasty. I buried it for a year and the grime that collected in the grooves micro-muted that stank, so it shan't be cleaned.
 
Cliff DeArment said:
Think about it.... who knows better? Zildjian, or you.
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I think about that sort of thing a lot before changing anything on my old Toyotas or considering aftermarket parts if OEM is available. Those engineers really knew what they were doing. Who am I to second guess people who revolutionized automobile durability?
 
Tommy D said:
Okay, lots of concern out there. Thanks for the warning, guys. If you don’t want to clean your cymbals with BKF, by all means find another way or just don’t clean them at all. That’s a perfectly normal choice as well.

As for me, BKF is the new go to for cleaning cymbals. It’s quick, it’s easy, it doesn’t remove logos (at least that has not been my experience) and it doesn’t change the sound of them. I have no concerns about its acidic nature because it is only on the cymbal for 10-15 seconds then it is washed off. I don’t see this stuff causing any issues to the metal with such short amounts of exposure time.
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This is exactly my thought with the cymbals I'm going to clean. That, plus the cymbals will never be gigged, but just meant to be with the Tama kit as a "learning experience" for those that will be playing the kit in my girlfriend's basement. The bottom line is that I'm looking forward to getting these cymbals looking nicer than their current condition!

-Mark
 
For anyone who is concerned about BKF, understand that ions would still be attached to the metal and water can't stop a corrosion process. Acids like citrus are not corrosive. In order to stop a corrosive strong acid is to balance the pH of the metal. In this case, an alkaline such as Clorox Clean-Up. Then the metal would be pretty much neutral.
 
Pat A Flafla said:
It's an acidic abrasive, so I don't know if i'd use it super often. (I don't know how acidic Zildjian's is.) Against advisement my spouse ruined our enameled porcelain sink with the stuff. It seems to me like it's one step away from Soft Scrub (which does not scrub softly).
I can get a good shine on cymbals with normal cymbal poiish and an electric buffer.

The alternative compound I keep meaning to try out on a junk cymbal is Simichrome. Has anyone tried that? Is it a terrible idea?
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As a former bicycle mechanic, we used Simichrome often, when polishing Campy hubs and other aluminum components. It’s a great polisher, but it does remove metal, so it’s something I wouldn’t trust on cymbals.
 
Back in the 90s, when shiny cymbals were important to me (nowadays I only wipe any dust off), I read in an issue of MD that basic ArmorAll does a great job cleaning and polishing cymbals, and leaves a nice protective coating that wears very evenly. I used that method for years, until I stopped caring about old cymbals looking new.

But I’m sure if I ever went back to polishing my cymbals, ArmorAll is all I’d use (after a little dish detergent wash first, of course).
 
Franklin Nigel Stein said:
We’re all doomed. Plastic particles in cells. Forever Chemicals. What’s that, like, a month?
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Considering your reaction score is 666, it's definitely a sign that the end of days is near. I didn't think my cymbal cleaning post would be the straw that broke the camel's back. Sorry everyone. It's all my fault...
 
Made a video this afternoon on cleaning with Bar Keepers Friend:

BTW, the thumbnail you see is the '70s 20" ride I just got and finished cleaning. The cymbal looked like this when I bought it:
IMG_0625.jpeg

IMG_0627.jpeg


Now it looks like this:
IMG_1696.jpeg

IMG_1697.jpeg
 
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Tommy D said:
Made a video this afternoon on cleaning with Bar Keepers Friend:

BTW, the thumbnail you see is the '70s 20" ride I just got and finished cleaning. The cymbal looked like this when I bought it:
View attachment 669882
View attachment 669883

Now it looks like this:
View attachment 669884
View attachment 669885
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Looks really nice. What’s holding me back is my unnatural interest in history and it’s maintaining, and that I’m an audial person (no, that’s not misspelled) rather than a visual person.
 
That’s why I say in the video that if you like the dirt and grime because you think it adds a certain mojo to the cymbal, don’t clean them. No one is forcing you to do something you don’t want to do.

I like the look and sound of new cymbals. I don’t think Avedis had his cymbal smiths make a cymbal and when he heard it he said, “yeah it’s not quite right, but in 50 years it will tame down and sound really good.” I think a clean cymbal represents the sound that the cymbal was designed to make. If I don’t like the sound of a cymbal, I either don’t buy it, or I sell it. I’m not going to bury it in the dirt for a year hoping it sounds the way I want when I dig it back up. I’ll just get rid of it and buy a cymbal that sounds how I want it to sound.
 
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