Bang!

Why would anyone want to clean a penny? asked a comedian last week at the "Poodle Club" comedy evening in Stoke Newington. At the time, I just chuckled and agreed that it was just a crazy suggestion by Mr Shouty, Barry Scott.

However, since then I've been reading some books about materials including Workshop Materials(Workshop Practice) by Alex Weiss and have been thinking about pickling, that's pickling of metal, not pickling of cucumbers. The idea is that you need to get all of the oxide and grease off your metal before you do things like plating or brazing or welding.

So there is some possibility of Cillit Bang working for this process. The description from the FAQ on the website is that it contains a mixture of acids and surfactants, so I've dropped them a note asking what they think about this idea.

• Cillit Bang experiment
• What happens when you mix a popular cleaning liquid with petrol? Bang!
• Another pickling product, VK Jelly