Few would consider a brush a mechanic’s tool, but most professional mechanics have a range of brushes to help with unique cleaning needs.
Steel-wire brush. Most farm shops have a steel-wired brush with a wooden or plastic handle. Many of them are nearly useless. They’re so old, and their wires’ tips are so bent, twisted and mangled that they’re about as effective as coarse steel wool. Which is okay, but not as effective in cleaning corroded threads or rusty surfaces as a wire brush with at least half of the wires standing straight up.
Brass-wire brushes don’t live long in many farm shops because they’re used too aggressively in the wrong places. Brass brushes are for cleaning brass fuel line fittings and other “delicate” metal surfaces. If you hold their handle between your fingertips rather than in your palm you’ll apply appropriate force and they’ll live longer.
Plastic brushes, from scrub brushes down to toothbrushes, are “consumable” tools, meant to be worn out and then replaced. I once knew a guy who entered his custom motorcycle in bike shows. He developed a “set” of toothbrushes, from hard-bristle to soft-bristle, some of them with the bristles trimmed shorter, to get into all the nooks and crannies on his bike to help him win “Best of Show.” (I wonder if he’s upgraded to a battery-powered toothbrush?)
Rotary brushes come with steel, brass or plastic bristles, with the bristles in a variety of shapes. I chuck them into a variable-speed hand drill to clean the threads of dead-end bolt holes, the bores of hydraulic cylinders, or to smooth the faces of valve blocks. Google “rotary brush kit” to see the hundreds of different designs of consumable rotary brushes on the market. Every time I shop those sites I see a brush that makes me think, “Boy, I remember a situation where that brush would have been really handy…”
