Over the weeks you spend curling, your synthetic brush head accumulates a lot of dirt, lint and other debris that eventually gets difficult to remove with the scrub brushes at the end of each sheet.
If you find your brush head looks particularly dirty, you’ll need to clean it with detergent and water. Here’s how. There is no reason to be concerned about compliance with Curling Canada or WCF regulations for a WCF-approved 55 Oxford Nylon 420 Denier mustard-yellow brush pad or sleeve; neither Curling Canada nor the World Curling Federation have a policy regarding the cleaning of sleeve or pad fabric, so cleaning the fabric with a small amount of detergent (not soap) and rinsing thoroughly will be just fine.
Today’s brushes feature removable pads that are held in place by the two large bolts on either side of the handle. The synthetic pads are typically nylon cloth over a thin piece of foam, mounted to a plastic base plate that has two threaded metal pieces for the bolts in the head. Hence you can immerse the entire pad in water without worrying about damage.
Fill your laundry tub with 2-3 inches of warm water and a touch of laundry detergent (since we have a front-load washer at our house, we use HE laundry detergent that creates fewer suds). Let it soak for 2-3 minutes, and then scrub the nylon pad with a stiff nylon brush. You’ll find the pad becomes clean fairly quickly; scrub it longer if necessary. Don’t use the kitchen sink for this, as you’ll find that the scrubbing will spray water all over your kitchen counter. If you don’t have a laundry tub, I suggest using the bathtub.
Rinsing is key – you must try to get all of the detergent out of the pad so that the detergent doesn’t get onto the ice when you use the brush, as that will both impact your brushing and the ice surface. Rinse the pad well, several times, with warm water, squeezing the pad to try to eliminate all of the detergent. Use running water under the tap for the final rinse.
Once the pad is rinsed, you can either air-dry it, which will take days, or you can place it on a dryer rack and dry the pad much like you would a pair of wet sneakers. Put the dryer setting on low, so you don’t melt the plastic base, and let the dryer run for 20 minutes or so.
Presto! You’ll have a clean brush head that will be much more efficient on the ice.