tea stains

[allen]

Thank you for your advice as I didn't mention the condition of the metal. I only mentioned the staining was immense but it's mostly all gone now.

It's still not perfect yet, but the old stainless steel is in OK shape. This is the result after the two step process that I found on the net.

[allen]

Thank you for your advice. You may have missed that I already tried the bleach.

I'm sorry that you missed the part I soaked it in bleach because you think it's an "attitude" but it's just that I already said in the OP that I used bleach that I bought from Home Depot which is stronger even than the typical grocery store Clorox.

So I'm sorry you missed that part.

The bleach didn't do anything to these stains when I filled this cup with bleach and soaked the strainer & the cup in that strong bleach overnight

[allen]

It's my own daughter who will be happy to get whatever I give her. She knows it's old. She used it many times when she was a mere child.

It has plenty of sentimental value to her. She grew up using it.

We bought the new one knowing we'd give her the old one. And she's fine with cleaning it herself.

But I enjoy using chemicals to clean things. In this case the chemical "softened" the tea stains magically so.

Look here after an overnight soak where this cup was scrubbed beforehand many times but it was the cup that I put the tea strainer in overnight.

Do you see those three clean marks? That's where I put my finger in there this morning.

I was shocked the tea stains had turned to mush. They were easily wiped away.

I can use this easy technique forever to clean up anything stained by tea!

[allen]

Thank you for that advice to leave the tea strainer stained when I give it my daughter as it probably has had those stains since she was a mere child.

She's all grown up now, and she is apportioning her first kitchen of her own, so we bought the new tea strainer with the knowledge we'd give her the old one.

She was willing to take it as it was as it has sentimental value for her, but I wanted it to look brand new, which it does now (but it didn't before).

What I learned from the everyone gave was that bleach and vinegar and baking soda and scrubbing with detergents (both dish & laundry) didn't work at all.

What worked was chemistry that first turned the black-brown tannin phenolic tea stains to mush, and then a second step that agitated the mush out of the mesh.

Here's a picture of that agitation process which I ran just this morning.

[allen]

Thank you for that advice where I did try scrubbing with baking soda but that didn't work as you can see here when it was soaking in it overnight.

I scrubbed with a toothbrush every abrasive I had in the kitchen including laundry detergent and a sponge and a rag and my fingernails even.

It wasn't going to come off without sandpaper which of course would have left scratches but what I learned works on everything (even delicate things like the coating on the inside of a ceramic teacup).

[allen]

I apologize for not making it clear that it wasn't trash but that it was just stained where what I was asking for was a kitchen chemical solution.

The two-step method accidentally worked with a teacup which has a few years of stains which were turned to mush and were easily wiped away with a towel.

If you look at that paper towel you can see the tea stains on it which were turned to mush by the two step process I learned thanks to all your help.

It was an added bonus that the teacup also was cleaned as I used it for the overnight soak of the metal tea strainer, but look how clean it became.

Thank you for all your help and advice.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Best way is to put it in the dishwasher and it won't accumulate over time

Even better, get one like this and it works better and cleans easily. I've been using one like it for years.

[allen]

I have those as they come with every electric tea kettle nowadays.

I ran a variety of additional experiments today, to hone the process.

I dumped everything that was brownstained into a large pot and boiled it up with the baking soda and everything was cleaned, the plastic & the metal.

I even dumped the tea strainer into that pot to make it as perfect as I can.

Apparently the many OH hydroxyl groups of the tannin phenolic resins attaches it very strongly to the metal and plastic, but in the presence of a base, with heat, the water can somehow pull the hydroxyl group off the metal and plastic to make it turn to a wet mush.

If there are any chemists out there on this ng, maybe you can explain better?

BTW, accidentally, it even cleaned the pot which has had these brown stains since forever, where even a brillo pad barely made a dent in the past.

Thank you all for your kind help and wonderful kitchen cleaning advice.

My wife joked we should give our daughter the new one now that the old one is so much shinier with all the attention that it got in the past few days!