Thread: Alcohol Dip

When I was in Beauty College, we sprayed our work area and all of our metal implements with rubbing alcohol then let them air dry.

Quite a lot of confusion and plenty of mistakes running around here.
First of all, only ethanol (ethylalcohol) has any real desinfecting abilities. It is mostly a fungicide and bactericide, it much less kills virusses, and spores not at all. Secondly, 70 % ethanol (preferably with water) is the best working concentration, anything lower or higher is less effective. You're best of wetting a cloth and repeatedly wiping the blade or any surface with it. Be careful with ethanol on other materials than metal or glass, results may vary, it is an organic solvent after all.

The surest way of sterilizing a blade would be to bake it at 180 °C for 4 hours or more. I don't think this would effect any heat treatment or result in blade warping, although we're talking very thin edges of course.

Autoclaving would be good as well, but not recommended due to the humidity and high carbon content of razor blades. Someone should try this actually, I'm curious as for the result.

I don't know anything about Barbicide or those other products. We use javel in the lab, most of the time. Cheap and VERY effective. Quite harmful to a lot of things tho...

My Vet says audoclaving will tend to dull the blades.

I know in my microbiology lab we use to use glass rods to spread one single organism onto a petri dish for a culture, and we use to dip the rod in ethanol and then light it on fire. The ethanol burnt off in about 1-2 seconds, so not long enough to heat anything up severly, but this was sufficient to kill all bacteria on the rod. I'm not sure how this would effect a razor as I have never tried it on steal, but Zwaplat is right, ethanol is the best alcohol to use as a disinfectant.

Couple of pointers;

1. 96% is the highest content of ethanol you can get in a solution of just alcohol and water, making it drinkable, any higher concentrations requires the water in the solution to be displaced with other dangerous substances. A 99% denatured ethanol solution can be obtained at most petrol stations.

2. Steel in alcohol? I've submerged both stainless steel strings and nickel plated steel strings in 99% ethanol for months without any harm to the strings. Saves me buying 40 € sets of bass strings every week. So stainless razors should be ok in a bath of ethanol as long as you can keep the lid on the jar you put it in (this is how I do it with strings to not waste alcohol, maybe it keeps them from rusting? Still, don't take my word for it, if your razor rusts from following my advice, your bad...

3. Never ever use any heat to sterilize a razor, due to the thin steel the edge heats up really quick, which might result in loss of tempering, which is a bad thing (ruined razor if you don't want to refordge it)

Personally I just rub my blades of with acetone and ethanol, keeps 'em shiny (the acetone does wonders on soap scum). I have only received one used razor, which was from Gugi, so after a wipe with both alcohols I felt safe enough.

The autoclaving-dulls-blades comment sounds interesting, how do surgeons keep their scalpels sterile and sharp at the same time in that case?

For the most part autoclaving doesnt affect surgical blades, because they only go through an autoclave once. Since this only dulls the blade over time, surgeons don't need to worry. You see, the blades are separate from the handles, and they slip in and out. Blades are only used for one person then thrown out, and the handles go through an autoclave.