The active ingredient in oven cleaners is sodium hydroxide or
potassium hydroxide other wise known as Lye.
When I was a very young man, my uncle was restoring
an early John Deere model 'D' tractor. Lots of large
castings, in fact I think the entire tractor was a
casting. He cleaned all the castings with lye and
they came out looking like a fresh cast part.
Only problem with it is it is really bad stuff to work with,
very caustic, eat your skin right off the bone if your not
carful with it.
I suppose the Easy-Off oven cleaner is quite a bit weaker than
straight lye and because of that it wouldn't work as fast as
the full strength product.
I've always been very leery of using caustic products
such as lye or acids because of the disposal. That's
what has prevented me from using the electroplating
kit's that I've had on the shelf for years.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
Last edited by Denny Graham; 07/16/2014 5:14 PM.
