Many groomers are not aware of the benefits associated with routine blade maintenance. Cleaning your blades on a regular basis can have many benefits, including: extending the life of the blade, reducing the number of times the blade needs to be sharpened, and for sanitary reasons it is important to clean your blade after clipping around an animal’s rectum and/or sanitary areas.

Below are frequently asked questions regarding routine blade maintenance:

Question: How often do you clean your blades? Answer: Generally, we clean our blades after every grooming day, or immediately following the clipping of an animal’s rectum and/or sanitary areas. Question: Do you shave dirty animals? Answer: Clipping dirty animals may cause your blades to dull significantly faster. Question: What products do you use to clean your blades? Answer: We use H-42 Blade Wash, and Clipper Oil. Question: Do you wet shave a matted dog after a bath? Answer: Yes, but proceed with caution!  When the skin is wet it is more elastic and easier to cut with a blade, so be very careful when wet shaving a matted dog. With that said, we often wet shave matted dogs following a bath.  Clipping a clean dog versus a dirty dog will prolong the sharpness of the blade. CAUTION: After you wet shave an animal, you always have to oil your blades or they may rust.  Question: What is a blade drive and how often should I replace mine? Answer: A blade drive is the assembly that moves the blade from side to side.  We replace our drive assemblies at least twice a year.  If you don’t replace your drive assembly regularly, your clipper may not be operating to its full efficiency. Question: How do you clean your blades? Answer: We use 5 easy steps to clean our blades. Step 1: Start by blowing excess hair from your blades Step 2: Run your blades in blade cleaner and watch the hair being pushed out from between the blades. CAUTION: only the blade should be run in the cleaner, DO NOT submerge the clipper in the blade cleaner.  Step 3: Apply Clipper Oil in these two places (between the teeth and between the two prongs). Step 4: After applying the Clipper Oil, run your blade for a few seconds so the oil works into the cutting areas of the blade. Step 5: Wipe the blade clean and blow off excess oil.    

Thank you for reading, we hope this article was helpful!