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Dirty work - not many of you will remember mel bentley, but in the days before the interweb, when the comic was great and the back pages were consumed by full page adverts for cycling bits we all needed rather than stuff we just wanted, mel filled at least one of those pages, and on occasion, even two. unfortunately mel seems to have disappeared without trace; certainly his shop is no longer in existence, and i did phone the comic a few years back to ask if anyone had heard where he is these days, but no-one had any idea.

why i mention this, is that mel supplied me with a workshop tool to remove the old fixed cup on cup and cone bottom brackets. doubtless there are those reading who have little idea of which i speak, since these days it's either cartridge bottom brackets with their own fitting/removal tools, or it's external bearings, bb30 or a variation on a theme. the fixed cup was the one that threaded into the drive side of the bottom bracket shell with very narrow flats that fitted a largish spanner for fitting/removal. fixed cup was a very apt description, as more often than not, the darned thing would not shift for love nor money. i will not attempt to describe the tool that mel supplied, but it allowed the clamping of serious leverage onto those indescribably inept flats on the cup. pretty much nothing could withstand it, and there wasn't a single bottom bracket that ever successfully resisted.

but, of course, it was a one trick pony; the tool was useless for any other purpose, and with subsequent so-called improvements to the bottom bracket systems on offer, it occupies a rather forlorn place in thewashingmachinepost bike shed, unused, unemployed, but definitely not unloved. it's not completely alone in this, as there are many cycle tools which no longer serve useful employment, and a few that look as if they may have to apply for unemployment benefit just shortly (chain rivet tools?)

but a tool in the very same bikeshed, and i think it has earned the appelation well, is a dirty workwipe from muc-off. actually, it's a whole bunch of dirty work wipes in a plastic container with a hole in the top. similarly to paper hankies or baby wipes, the container works on the principle of a second wipe pulling through along with the tail end of the first. thus a fresh wipe is always presented to the great unwashed. grime of a cycling nature has an inbuilt attraction to human skin and any light coloured clothing that is nowhere near a bicycle or component. regular wipey things will remove the surface gunk, but rarely the mess that has become ingrained. muc-off dirty work wipes have one surface that is considerably more tactile than the other, making light of moving even heavily ingrained yuk. but their crowning glory is being able to accomplish all this without water, and the abiity to leave hands smelling lemon fresh.

because of their scrapey surface, they are also highly effective on componentry that has acquired a coating of oily gunk: i'm thinking front and rear derailleurs here, but they also work particularly well on clogged up brake shoes without affecting braking surfaces. you may not do much work on your bicycle(s); perhaps it only extends to oiling the chain now and again, and therefore there may not be the necessity for anything that will remove boy scouts from horses' hooves, but the least your bikeshed should contain is a tub of dirty wipes. and it's worth popping one or two in with the tyre lever and spare tube for emergency repairs on the road. grass doesn't really work as advertised.