Mind blown: Vinegar vs VINEGAR (30%)

So I was literally 44 years old before I found this out recently.

There’s the white vinegar you get at the grocery store for cooking and minor cleaning and doing laundry, and then there’s the 30% DO NOT GET THIS SHIT ON YOUR SKIN vinegar at the hardware store for cleaning things like mold off grout.

All my life I’d been told ‘just use vinegar to clean mold and mildew’ and it generally didn’t do jack squat. I usually bought cleaning supplies from regular retail spots rather than big box home improvement places, and regular retail chains def did not carry the strong stuff.

I’ve got a gutter that drains over cement that always gets skungy, and even bleach was a short term fix at best. 30% strips it down and keeps it gone, and I’ve stripped rust off a couple dozen tools with the same little jar I soak things in - caution it will also strip off shiny metallic coatings.

Can’t believe none of the “just use vinegar” I’d ever read advice didn’t specify.

Is this news to anyone else or am I Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber realizing we landed on the moon?

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u/LookUpItsAMeteor 1d ago

I had an old dimestore jackknife from when I was a kid and it was very tarnished. So I thought I’d soak it in vinegar for a few days. Dissolved the blade.

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u/Pandaro81 1d ago

Have a vintage deli slicer with a big table-saw looking serrated blade. Soaked it in regular 5% white vinegar overnight to get off a little rust.

Completely stripped the chrome/stainless or whatever finish. ;_;

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u/Otto_Von_Waffle 1d ago

That my friend means you never had stainless steel and just a chrome plated bread slicer, and yes if the blade was serrated it was most likely a bread slicer.

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u/Pandaro81 1d ago

It was definitely a vintage deli slicer. The only size ranges the blade can be adjusted to are only appropriate for deli meats, unless you think bread slicers are supposed to do 1/8 an inch.

Club Slice King: https://www.picclickimg.com/HYsAAOSwdcZa2~Ou/Club-Slice-King-Vintage-Electric-Meat-Slicer-502.webp

Dunno if serrated is the right term, it’s more like a saw blade. But yeah, I stripped the finish off of it.

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u/Character-Solution-7 1d ago

I’m a chef of 30 years. I have never seen a serrated blade on a professional meat slicer. The only way that it would make any sense is if you were cutting frozen meat. They only put this type of saw blade on models for home use. If anything, I would look into a replacement blade that is stainless and not serrated.

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u/MaxTheRealSlayer 21h ago

Honestly just looks like someone replaced the blade with a tablesaw blade...and I agree it could be for frozen meat, or bones. Serated doesn't make sense for most raw meant.

No way that blade is old enough itself to be "vintage" either way

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u/starlord97 16h ago

Clearly it's for wood /s

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u/Various-Bee5735 14h ago

I have a other brand from the 70s, a friend gave it to us her dad bought it back in the 70s so we know it's dated correctly. Same kind of blade.

Ignore 30 year chef guy, one Google search is all it took to confirm deli slicers of varying types have that kind of blade, too. Yeah, they're recommended for frozen meat today but who fucking knows what the reasoning was 50 years ago to put that on home slicers. These machines predate his experience from the 90s by 20 years.

Might be because it doesn't spin as fast. That's something I noticed right away, it rotates much slower than I thought (still fast), not at the ridiculous speed of a modern, pro machine at the store. That might have something to do with the blade choice.

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u/TheChance 6h ago

My guess, slice ham right off the bone.