On Oct 29, 3:07*am, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 10/28/2009 3:27 PM Leon spake thus:

[snip]

This time around he brought mineral spirits, odorless AAMOF.

I noticed,

1. No odor, although Swingman would testify that is smells like a
refinery 13.6 miles NE of Pasadena, TX had just released .003 atoms
of smelly stuff into the atmosphere about 15 minutes prior. ;~)

2. *It works just as well as thinner for cleaning the brushes.

3. *I never once had a friggin dripping brush after lunch.

Does mineral spirits evaporate faster than thinner?

Welllll ... thinner *is* mineral spirits. But you obviously got a
different type of spirits, a different fraction. So in your case it
seems to have evaporated faster.

--
Who needs a junta or a dictatorship when you have a Congress
blowing Wall Street, using the media as a condom?

- harvested from Usenet

Wellll, yes and no. "Thinners" can be mineral, but don't have to be.
Petroleum based "thinners", like Varsol are purely petroleum based.
Then there are turpentine based (pine-resin distillate) and blends of
both of the above. Pure terps stink to high heaven , but not too
offensive to some, but boy does it clean a brush. Then again, so does
gasoline, favourite brush-cleaner of many. ( A little Agent Orange
never hurt anybody.)
The **ulene types of thinners/cleaners can also be found blended with
either terps or petroleum based solvents... lacquer thinner can be one
of those. My paint-booth guru of yore sold me 2 grades of "thinners",
one to thin my lacquers, one to clean my equipment. Smelled the same,
but clearly weren't. Sikkens M600 is still THE stuff that cleans my
Iwata HVLP the best.
Varsol, on the other hand, is what I would consider a 'real' mineral
spirit. "Varsol Fluids can be used in a wide variety of applications,
including thinners for paint and coatings, general purpose cleaners,
dry cleaning fluids, fuel additives and asphalt viscosity reducers."

What I like about Varsol, is that it is cheap. It won't screw up your
$ 30.00 Purdy brush. The other so-called cleaners and thinners don't
go near my arsenal of Purdy's. (I love those round pointed french sash
brushes...)