Dremel wire brush nightmare

[FramFramson]

Jeez, just had a new Dremel wirebrush bit come apart on me while I was working near the kitchen. I wasn't doing anything excessive, just cleaning a bit of surface grime off of some pennies for basing.

Wound up with a million tiny wire slivers all over the place. Had to throw out the clothes I was wearing because that was hopeless. I can only pray the vacuum got 'em all, because there's no way anything else will get them, so we're just going to have them turn up in our feet or, worse, the cats. Christ what a nightmare. What a piece of defective crap.

They're steel bits, but they're tiny and get snagged in anything, so I doubt magnets would help. Anyone have any other suggestions for hazmat cleanup of this junk?

[joroas]

If there is an old abandoned microwave somewhere, the magnets from those are very powerful.

[Captain Blood]

Well I 've never had one come apart on me completely like that, but they do deteriorate over time and start throwing off tiny steel splinters which are pretty painful if you get one in the eye! I learned the hard way and now always wear goggles when cleaning up figures. I think it's not unreasonable that a steel wire brush starts to fray and throw off fragments after x hours of use. I guess the trick is to switch to a new one in good time. But I've never heard of one coming apart completely before. That sounds like a defective product to me. Was it a genuine Dremel part?

[Mitch K]

Those tiny steel wire brushes are godawful things. I don't use them now. They always shed bristles, the only question being how quickly and into what. If ever there was something you can use that lets you know precisely how important it is to wear safety glasses, those are it.

I don't want to be even more negative, but a magnet might not help - a lot of those brushes are stainless steel and the stuff is non-magnetic. Gaffer tape or a lint roller might work, but I usually found the only cure was time and pulling the wretched things out of my fingers.

I've found the brass ones are marginally less awful, but if I'm cleaning stuff for gluing or to key it up, I find a small grinding bit is more effective.

[FramFramson]

I use wire brushes a lot for cleaning figures for priming, but I suppose I easily could have used a grinding bit for this. My old one has been very solid, but was getting a little worn, so I went to get a new one. It was a genuine Dremel bit picked up from the local hardware store and this was the first time I'd used it. There's a huge chunk out of it where a whole clump of wires just gave way.

This was the regular steel brush, not the stainless one (thank god for my being a cheap ass), so maybe a magnet might work after all, but any fibres left are probably ensnared in the flooring or carpets. Here's hoping I can avoid getting metal slivers in my feet again.

Ohhh for a dedicated workshop space!

[Captain Blood]

Hmmm. Brand new. Instant disintegration... Danger to health... Litigation sounds like the answer!

[FramFramson]

The wife wound up giving me a little mild hell because the vacuum filter is now full of deadly shrapnel.  

Well, we needed to buy new filters anyway.