if you're a painter you probably have a couple paintbrushes just like this
they're dingy they're dirty they're fraying they're falling apart and probably you forgot
to clean them which means you got caked on paint hard spots all over the place and
you kind of want to throw that paintbrush away but don't do that just yet i'm going to show
you a product that's going to clean and restore our old paintbrushes so we can still use them
in our painting projects want to know what it is we'll stick around because here we go
hey it's me it's wild coming at you to help you with your creative adventures to make sure you
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below and tick that bell so you know my videos go live for you so what is this miracle product
that's going to not only clean our brushes but restore our old ones that we can use well it is
murphy's oil soap and to be honest i've used this product a couple of times but it's already when
my paint brushes are wet and easy to clean up and it worked fantastic but i kind of want to put this
product to the test so what i did is i went out and bought some cheap paint brushes i bought six
of them three for oil and three for acrylic for two of them i painted with them and left them to
dry for one week straight with paint still on the bristles did that again for a one day and i did
it again for a couple of hours this way we kind of get a big gambit to test from just so we're
all on the same page the oil paint i'll be using for our test is a windsor newton prussian blue
oil paint for the acrylic side it's going to be an artists loft ivory black acrylic paint now i'm
going to treat my brushes all the same as if i had just finished painting or just covered my brushes
because they've had time to dry so for my oil brushes i'm gonna dip them in some paint thinner
to loosen up all the pigment and binder for my acrylic brushes i'm gonna dip them in some
slight warm water to do the same effect gonna take both brushes and put them against a beater rack
or a screen to work off again the excess paint or binding material that's left on those bristles if
you want a cool little hack here and you want to restore your paint brushes i really recommend also
cleaning your paint brushes at this phase with a spare toothbrush because that will get inside the
bristles and clean it without ruining your paint brush we can do this step again in a different
spot which i'll bring up now that we've worked off the big chunks of paint and binder on our bristles
we can move over to using our murphy's soap oil now there's a trick to using murphy soap oil
you want to find yourself a spare jar a baby food jar works excellent here but if you're
a single bachelor like me you don't have any of those and if you do it's kind of creepy so a good
awesome substitute that i know everyone out there who's a creative person will have is a shot glass
use a spare shot glass and in here we can pour in our murphy's oil soap now pour your murphy soap
into your glass container you only need enough to cover the bristles for the paint brushes
that you'll be cleaning or restoring now before you put your paintbrush in the glass container
you actually want to be very diligent about how you do this don't stick your paint brushes all the
way in and let them rest and don't push your paint brushes towards the bottom because you run the
risk of your paint brushes resting on the bottom and pushing paint from the bottom of the bristles
all the way up to the top of the bristles where they can get into the ferrule which means they
can ruin your paintbrush even further the correct way to do this is lightly put your paint brushes
in the glass container and against the side of the glass container just move it up and down and swirl
it around gently and this is going to get inside your bristles and break up all that extra pigment
and binder to make it clean now if your paint brushes look like this they're really old really
dirty really dingy and they've been drying for a long time you can do a cool little trick you can
do stages of murphy's oil because what happens is when you stick your paintbrush in there it's gonna
get a little sludgy or a little dirty and what you can do is go from one stage to the next to the
next and it'll keep working off that excess paint which i really recommend doing if you have a brush
that is really dirty now that your paint brush is fully coated and the murphy's oil soap let it sit
there for a little bit on an edge or some place that you know it'll be safe where it won't be
putting soap on the ground or at least put a paper towel beneath it so that we don't slip and fall we
want the soap to sit on the bristles for a little bit to work itself into that binder and pigment to
break it up for our next step now depending on how long you leave it here really depends on how dirty
your brush is so you may again have to do this in a couple of stages now we get to wash our paint
brushes you want to use lukewarm water not too hot because we don't want to damage our brushes
and not too cold you want to goldilocks it here okay so just do like a nice little light finger
touch take your paint brush that's coated in murphy's oil soap and pull out your palm and
let the water dribble into it and work the paint brush back and forth to work up a very good lather
and you should start to see some of the pigment and binder come off with the water and so like we
said depending on how dirty your brush is this may need a few times to get something really clean or
restore it back to a usable state all right how did our murphy's oil soap stack up in our test
well let's start with our acrylic paint brushes first with our wet paint brush which is about
two hours of paint that dried on the brush it actually came off really easily with one
run-through of our system of cleaning here the brush looks super clean it bends it just needs
to be reshaped and everything will be fine with our paintbrush on our one day which is 24 hours
of acrylic paint drying on there it took two to three times to get it clean with the murphy soap
but you know what it actually came back to a usable state it has some hard points in there
so i may only use it for certain things like highlights for our one week you know what i
actually got it back to almost new there are some small chunks inside the paintbrush that go up and
down some of the bristles but i got a lot off of here now to be fair i had to do about three or
four runs with the murphy oil soap but it still bends it still has some bounce and it looks clean
and it is still usable so this actually worked out really well provided you do enough run-throughs
with the murphy oil soap so what about our oil paint brushes well with our wet paint
brush which is two hours of oil paint on there it worked fantastic it ate through that oil paint
really really quickly to make it look perfect and brand new and just how a paintbrush should be
for our one day which is 24 hours of oil paint drying on there it stained and left a lot of
chunks now it's not an unusable paintbrush you could still use it for things that you have to
tap on for highlights or perhaps even laying of grass but i was still surprised at how many big
chunks were left on the paintbrush so i would say it's not bad but not great for our one week which
is a lot of time on our paintbrush here for oil paint to sit it uh it took off surprisingly a good
chunk to where it wasn't hard and i could use this paintbrush for maybe some things but uh it's still
got a lot of chunks in here but believe it or not it still actually has some bounce and some give
and i can shape the brush to make it usable it's going to have a lot of stain a lot of binder and
a lot of pigment left on those bristles there so all in all it didn't do too bad but not as good
as i've always seen from youtube reviews and also threads from art people it's a great product don't
get me wrong because it actually did restore a lot of these brushes but i thought it would totally
restore everything to brand new now i've heard a lot of people say on different forums and threads
that you kind of need to work off the murphy's oil soap which i i agree with and don't agree with i
guess it depends on the type of painter you are there's a few things you can do here you can just
work it within the water and get all that murphy's oil soap off or i see a lot of people take a few
dabs of dawn dish soap to kind of work out the remainder of the murphy's oil soap or you know
what you can do is when you're going to start your next painting if you're using oil paint you can
dip your paint brush in thinner which is going to work off the rest of that murphy's oil soap
but what i personally like to do and i recommend for you is after i've worked off my murphy's oil
soap and i've kind of blotted the paintbrush dry i like to use my master paintbrush cleaner
and conditioner and that's really key is the conditioner part is because it's not only
going to get the remaining pigments out of there with the cleaning sign it's going to condition
the brush which means it's going to nourish the bristles it's going to make sure they last long
which is what i really want for your paint brushes and you probably should do to your older paint
brushes that you're rejuvenating and bringing back to life because they probably haven't had
any nourishment in those bristles in a long time so make sure you do that because it really works
now i know that's a lot of steps but trust me it's going to be worth it for you at the end
here just make sure you blot it dry reshape your brush and let it air dry off an edge and your
paint brushes are gonna be so much better you're gonna thank me a ton because i just saved you
a bunch of money now if you like any of these products that we mentioned the murphy's
oil soap and also the master brush cleaner and conditioner you can do me a huge favor and use
the links down below they're affiliation links which means they help out my channel
they cost you nothing and i got brand new ones down there so they should be taking you to the
right location in many countries and regions to help you out so thank you for using those links
down below now if you need any more helpful tips and tricks with painting oh i got so many of them
for you i'm going to put a couple of videos over here to the right hand side where you can become
bigger and better with your creative adventures wild wishing you the best of luck keep those
paint brushes wet and clean and i will see you all later take care and of course peace