Overheard a 30-year veteran say wire brushes are obsolete and I'm just not buying it

He was pushing those nylon rotary brushes for everything, even heavy creosote, but after 15 years in this trade I've seen too many fluffy brush jobs leave a glaze behind especially on those old clay liners in Seattle winters, so who's actually switched completely and regretted it?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_bailey182d ago

My buddy in Portland tried switching to the nylon brushes exclusively for about six months. He ended up having to rod out a chimney that had a visible glaze line halfway down the flue, right where the brush had skimmed the creosote instead of scraping it off. He went back to wire brushes for heavy stuff after that and hasn't looked back.

ray_williams1d ago

Did he ever figure out if it was the brush size or the material that caused that glaze line, @xena_bailey18? I’ve seen guys run poly brushes on the wrong size rod and they just slide over the heavy stuff without any bite. Wire is definitely the way to go for the nasty buildup, but I wonder if a stiffer nylon with a bigger diameter would have changed that outcome at all.