Best Rags for Grease

A rag or wiper is typically the first item used to help remove grease. As we all know grease is the one thing in your shop that will stick and stay on everything. Usually, cleaning grease requires a degreaser, rags, and special soap to remove the grease off your hands when you (finally) are finished the job (all of which we carry, btw). Depending on what you are removing grease from, we have different options available.

Rags to remove grease from parts

If the parts you are trying to remove the grease from are small and mobile, we recommend soaking them in a concentrated cleaner or degreaser mixed with water, letting the parts sit for 24-hrs and then checking back with them. The soaking process will help remove loosen and remove built up grease before you grab your rag to start cleaning.

More than likely, the rags used to clean the parts will only be used once because they will get extremely dirty. While the cheapest option is sometimes good, a higher quality rag may actually make the job easier and quicker in the long run.

For cheap – go with our cut up polo t-shirt rags. These rags are made from (mostly) cotton old shirts that can used and disposed of after.

For quality - Our huck towels (sometimes called surgical towels) are large square rags with hemming on all edges. This textured material will provide greater grit while wiping and cleaning off the remaining dirt or grime.

Lastly, an X-tra tuff wipe can be a great consistent option These wipes are absolutely what we say they are – X-tra tuff! They are super strong and absorbent. Additionally, they do not fall apart, rip or tear easily. They are less expensive then cotton rags and offer most consistency. Also, they come on a roll or in a handy pop-up dispenser box.

Rags to remove grease from floors

Grease on shop floors is always a problem. Besides the fact that it will stain your floors, it can cause a major slip and fall hazard. To remove grease from floors, we recommend using a cleaner/degreaser on the floor first. We have numerous options of this available – such as simple green, fleetkleen (which will remove the stain, smell and the grease), and generic degreasers.

After the grease on the floor has loosened, our large terry cloth towels work efficiently to wipe off the floor. These towels are bath towel size but not at bath towel prices. The larger the surface area, the quicker you will be able to remove the grease. For the final cleaning, we have shammy towels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2T7vQiY_Qo) which will remove the greasy “sheen”.

One way to make sure you do not have grease on your floors is to use floor protection. We have numerous options of floor protectors available – from oil and water absorbent rolls to our Xtra Sticky rolls.

Rags to remove grease from your hands

After the grease has finally been removed with your elbow grease (no pun intended), it is now time to clean your hands. To clean your hands – just like we started with the floor and parts – we recommend using a hand cleaner and soap. We have industrial strength hand cleaners that contain special scrubbers meant to loosen grease from your hands. They are available in wall-mount form and in pump-bottles for more mobility. The problem with these is that they all need soap.

To combat this problem, we created Megawypes. These hand cleaning wipes are 9”x12” towels that come in a dispenser tub. They have 75 wipes per tub and are perfect to throw in the back of the truck or to bring directly on a job site. They are pre-moistened with a cleaning agent and the towels have a little grit to them, which helps to clean hands on the go.

Cleaning grease will always be a dirty task, which is why we carry a full line of supplies to help remove grease from your parts, tools, machines, floors and hands.