Old timer swore by a heat gun for stripping fridge gaskets, actually worked

Had a 15 year old Sub-Zero with a gasket so crusty it was basically fused to the door frame. My usual razor blade method was taking forever and gouging the plastic. This retired guy who used to do commercial kitchen repairs told me to hit it with a heat gun on low for about 2 minutes, then peel it off like a sticker. I thought he was nuts, but I tried it on a section and it came off clean as hell. Whole door took me maybe 20 minutes instead of the usual hour plus. Anyone else use heat for stubborn adhesive or is this common knowledge I just missed?

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hugoj8629d ago

Ha, yeah that tracks. Once you learn that heat is basically the cheat code for anything stuck, you start seeing it everywhere. I pulled a car emblem off last month with a hairdryer cause the adhesive was cooked, worked way better than fishing line and goo gone. People spend forever scraping off sticker residue on coolers and toolboxes when a solid 30 seconds with a heat gun just wipes it away. It's always the old guys who know this stuff cause they learned it fixing things before fancy solvents existed. I bet half the time you can skip the chemicals entirely and just let warm air do the work.