Swarfega green - still good?

[Conor]

Nothing wrong with "poor mans swarfega".

[Peter Twydell]

In message , mogga writes

It must be at least four years old by now. Smells the same as when it was new and it's still effective. No burns, rashes, embarrassing pongs, etc.

One thing I did learn was that if your bathroom door has a knob rather than a handle, open the door before applying slippery cream to the hands. Wasn't a problem in the previous house as the BC was kept in the kitchen, which had a lever handle on the door.

[Bramble-Stick]

For many years I used cheap washingup liquid (the thin stuff, usually green), adding white spirit a teaspoon at a time until it gelled to a thick transparent consistency - worked a treat, and had a particular smell which I always associated with a certain popular hand-cleaner. I just use disposable gloves now though... Bramblestick

[Willy Eckerslyke]

The previous owner of my Land Rover had left a few latex disposable gloves lying around in it after using them when messing about with dieselly bits. The resulting sticky, half melted mess is one of the most disgusting things imaginable.

[Bramble-Stick]

I find PVC rather more long-lasting in this context. Care to move this discussion to alt.sex.fetish.landrover? :-)

Bramblestick

[Ian]

Wimp.

Ian

[Ian]

I find Comma "Manista" excellent. It has the polygrains in it, so it cleans well, but it seems to avoid the astringent harshness of many of the other makes.

What I want to know, though, is what happened to waterless Swarfega?

Ian

[Chris Bartram]

Heh. Out of the list of things you might do while the wife is out, "throwing out condensed milk" is not what would have topped most lists.

[Huge]

The management insisted.

[Huge]

Interesting euphemism, though.

[Chris Bartram]

An alternative to "crashing the yoghurt truck" maybe.

[Andy Hall]

But how would you use it?

Ah. Yes. Of course.

Oh, I say.....

[Si]

A real man would've put them in his shed!

[Andy Dingley]

Reposted obit, from a couple of years ago

From London tabloid, The Times, via alt.obituaries

Audley Bowdler Williamson, the inventor of Swarfega, was born on February 28, 1916. He died on November 21, 2004, aged 88.

Inventor of Swarfega, the emerald gel famed for its phenomenal efficacy against engine oil, grease and grime of all kinds.

OIL-STAINED mechanics, greasy bikers and grubby petrol heads the world over owe their social lives and a debt of happiness to "AB" Williamson. He was the inventor of Swarfega, the cool, strangely seductive emerald-green gel with a wonderful ability to cleanse even the blackest, grimiest hands, wrists and forearms. For half a century it has been the end-of-the-day ritual for numberless mechanics: a scoop of the fingers into a battered grimy pot of the translucent gel, rub and rinse, and clean, socially acceptable skin reappears as if by magic.

Audley Bowdler Williamson was born in Heanor, Derbyshire, in

1916. His father and his father's two brothers, who had operated a horse-drawn haulage business for the Nottingham silk trade, returned from the First World War convinced that motorised transport was the future.

They started with lorries and soon moved into buses, running the business from the yard beside their home, and so Williamson was familiar with the oily business of motor mechanics from an early age. He attended Heanor Grammar School and in 1934, at the age of 18, he joined a local firm, Dalton's -known to all as Silkolene for its lubricants -as a trainee chemist.

In 1941 he set up a company, Deb, in Belper, just north of Derby -he took the name from "debutante" to signify that both the company and its products, all developed by him, were new to the market. Williamson had high hopes for his first product, a mild detergent called Deb Silkware Protection. The war had diverted silk to parachute production, but Williamson was confident that when the hostilities were over, silk stockings would be back in a big way. Alas, the Americans arrived with nylons and destroyed the silk stocking market -and the need for Deb Silkware Protection.

Falling back on his early memories of oily-handed motor fitters washing their hands with petrol, paraffin and sand -and suffering from cracked skin and dermatitis -he decided to develop a skin cleaner which would remove engine oils and grease, but leave the body's natural oils intact. And so, in 1947, Swarfega was born; it was the first hand cleaner of its type in the world.

The name derives from "swarf" -the fine, oily tangle of metal shavings produced when machining components, and hence unwanted oil and grease in general -and "ega", as in "eager to clean".

Swarfega burst upon a postwar era which was just succumbing to mass motoring and masses of motor mechanics -and soon became a household word.

Deb gradually increased its product range to include other skincare and workplace cleaning products, from car shampoos to engine degreasants. And as Britain's heavy engineering industries declined, the company diversified its products to target such markets as hospitals and other large institutions. It now also produces Suprega, an "orange Swarfega" which uses citrus oils instead of the petroleum-derived solvents in the famous original. At present the company's annual worldwide turnover is more than £60 million.

This steady success allowed Williamson, after his retirement in 1986, to follow his lifelong socialist principles and contribute his money and management skills to a number of philanthropic initiatives. These include the Belper Civic Association and the Ryklow Charitable Trust, which support environmental and wildlife conservation activities.

Williamson's wife Kathleen, whom he married in 1943, died two years ago. He is survived by their three sons.

[Andy Dingley]

Try "Lava" handwipes in the bright red packets.