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An auto body shop isn’t the first place you’d think to go for tips on tidying the kitchen, but the people who take pride in detailing cars know a thing or two about cleaning surfaces without damaging them. So when I found out that body shops used a special kind of steel wool to clean windshield glass, I was intrigued.
Popular cleaning wisdom alerts us that using steel wool should be limited to materials that can handle its abrasive power—just imagining the scratches standard steel wool might leave on delicate glassware makes me shudder. No matter how much you hate baked on grease, you probably don’t want a Pyrex dish that has the opacity of sea glass. But those rules don’t apply to 0000-grade steel wool, which has steel fibers far finer than a typical scouring pad.
Steel wool is made of thin steel filaments, and the various grades of steel wool are determined by the thinness of those filaments. The finest grade steel wool available is 0000—its little steel wires measuring 0.025 millimeters in diameter.
I bought some 0000 steel wool from my local hardware store and tried it on the blackened drip tray of my toaster oven. While it lit up every muscle fiber in my good arm and took a few solid minutes of work, I was able to buff away some incredibly persistent grease with only steel wool and hot water, leaving absolutely zero scratches behind. When I discovered this, I was happy, yes, but also frustrated. How had I wasted years of my life soaking and scrubbing nasty baking dishes for hours? I’ve also used 0000 steel wool on glasses and stemware—the superfine filaments buffed away cloudy spots that linger after a conventional handwashing.
Upon deeper digging, I learned that many cleaning professionals have been using 0000 steel wool for years—and if you haven’t tried it, I’d highly recommend buying a box. Before you get started, though, keep these tips in mind:
Whip out the dish gloves to avoid any possible skin irritation when using steel wool. Also, since this variety is superfine, it can release extra-fine shavings. Consider popping a face mask on for super heavy-duty scrubbing. (I’m guessing you might have one around the house these days.)
Rust makes superfine steel wool coarse, so do not use rusty wool on glass or other delicate surfaces.
It’s always a good idea to do spot tests on an inconspicuous area before you go to town with your new steel wool, just to avoid any accidental damage. Yes, 0000 steel wool is used by professionals on glass, but a little caution never hurt anybody.
