Best way to clean type.

I have 12 drawers of lead/metal type I need to clean. I’m thinking of getting a sonic cleaner to avoid lots of chemical stuff. Anyone here have luck with one? I read that a 60watt should do the trick. 

I have used a ?Sonic Wave Ultrasonic Jewelry Cleaner Cleaning Machine CD-2800? to clean type.  I was hoping it would just wash the type but it took too many runs through the machine to clean and most of my type really needed a degreaser to remove all the grime.  So I added the follow steps and had fabulous success. 

1. Soak the type in Simple green or Super clean for 10 minutes.  I found super clean worked better but simple green still works fine.
2. Take each piece out and run a soft tooth brush over.
3. Load in the ultrasonic basket; pour some clean water over.
4. Ran each batch twice through the ultrasonic cleaner.  Dumping the water between the first run and the second but not between batches. 
5. Take out type and put on a towel to pat dry; some pieces may need to go through the cleaner again.
6. Then place type (no pieces touching) on a cheap pizza aluminum cooking sheet covered in paper towels with a heating pad underneath on high to dry. 

Drying is really important and the cookies sheet idea was from someone on briar press and it worked great.   Now you are asking yourself why use the ultrasonic cleaner if you are washing each piece.  Because it removes the smaller stuff in the grooves and rinses the cleaner off the type.  Maybe if my type was just dusty I wouldn’t have had to add the additional steps.

cheers, Cindi

Thank you Cindi

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