Hello, I recently bought a lot of parts from a yardsale, and it is absolutely filled with dust. I haven't come across any solid answers on how to get dust out of buckets of parts, only from creations. I personally haven't had a bad issue with this, as I vacuum regularly, so I'm not sure how to go about this .  Any help would be appreciated.

Make a sink of hot dishwater and brush 'em clean, rinse, dry. You may want an old toothbrush or a small, soft household brush.

If there's a lot of dust and a lot of parts, DEFINITELY do something to get as much dust removed before you apply water of any sort, or you'll be sorry; it goes from tedious but easy to remove to dirt adhered at every edge and nook that has to be scrubbed off.  Now, if they're really dirty (like were played with outside and have more dirt & mud than dust), you may as well go right to washing them.

From my experience dealing with bulk parts in a similar situation, I'd start by vacuuming small batches of the parts, then go with warm (not hot) dishwater with just a tiny bit of dish soap and stir/scrub with a soft brush as needed, then rinse them in clean water with a touch of rinse aid (like you'd use in a dishwashing machine) to help prevent water spots all over them if you don't take the trouble to completely dry them all (the quick way is to dump them out into towels and pat them dry, then lay them out under a fan or other place with good airflow to let them finish drying).

For the vacuuming of parts, I use the hose attachment on my vacuum and put something sturdy but with good airflow over the opening (cheese cloth, used dryer sheets work surprising well - something like that held with strong rubber bands) with a little bit of slack so it's not taught and prone to getting punctured, then literally just stick it into a shallow tray of parts and vacuum, stir, vacuum, repeat.  If you have a dusting brush attachment for your vacuum, use that and put one layer of the cloth barrier you're using on the end that attaches to the hose (so it's just held in there by friction the way the attachment is) and another one actually loosely wrapped around the brush itself so it's got plenty of play to make contact with the bricks and move the dust.  You'll need to turn off the vacuum now and then to peel off the layer of dust and hair and whatnot that builds up (like cleaning the lint filter in your clothes dryer), and just keep going that way dumping parts from the bulk lot into the tray and vacuuming until they seem OK, then doing a new batch.  Seems a little weird, but works well and is much faster than other methods when dealing in bulk, and very little chance that any parts will get sucked up.  

If you have an air compressor, you can try blasting the dust off  with an blower attachment.

I will echo what others have said:

muddy/dirt caked -- wash it

Dusty: compressed air first, then wash

For my washing, I try to use warm water (water over 104°F/40°C is not recommended by TLG to avoid bringing the bricks out of tolerance) with soap, and, if I bought the bricks second hand, a little hydrogen peroxide as a disinfectant.  Then I strain them, rinse with distilled water to avoid hard water stains, and air dry.  I have heard some using salad spinners for initial drying, which is a great idea, but I don't have one of those.  I can typically get 12L of bricks washed, dried, sorted, and put away in 3-4 days using this method, but air-drying will depend on what your climate is (if you live in a very humid area, expect this to take longer).

Yes, compressed air can work, but if this is a lot of loose bricks that's why I use the vacuum in those cases instead (too easy to blow bricks everywhere, though you can contain them in various ways... but then still you need to do it outside or something where you don't mind all the dust blowing ).  I will also 2nd the use of a salad spinner for initial drying - that works very well to speed things along.

That's a good point.  If you have a lot of parts, or a lot of small parts (think 1 x 1 plates), then vacuuming with a shield can be better than compressed air, for all the reasons mentioned above.  Low pressure air at an oblique angle outdoors is OK for some things, but has its issues.  For large batches I have used high pressure air directly onto the parts when contained in a burlap-style bag (i.e., porous), outdoors.  Not everyone has that kind of a setup, though.

Blowing off with air might help short term, but long term it's still going to be in the building (unless done outside of course).

I use a vacuum attachment that attaches to the regular vacuum hose, and looks like a short ~1 cm diameter garden hose, which has multiple attachments with brushes.

So I have a 1 cm and 2 cm wide brush , which cleans areas between studs really well, and it doesn't seem to scratch it as it's soft enough.

Edited November 28, 20195 yr by TeriXeri

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I'll be attempting to use a mixture of all of these methods, by sorting the dirty, muddy parts out and using the vacuum method and air compressor method for the rest.  Hope it works out! 

Edited November 30, 20195 yr by legostarwars1425

Make sure you have a coalescing filter on your air compressor, or you can get oil particles on your parts, especially if you crank it up to 90psi (620kPa for you metric folk) like I do.