Gosh - I've had my bucket of sand and oil for years. It's probably got quite a bit of dirt mixed in there too. Of course, trying to dispose of it would have me scratching my head. Yeah, the original idea was to run shovels up and down in the bucket but now it makes a good corral for all of my various shovels and spades. If you can, use contractor sand which would be coarser than play sand and might help the scrubbing action.
Sally - I won't get close to what you've done to your tools until after the holidays when I generally have more time and am counting the days until gardening starts again.
Ginny - I do use the 3M green scrubbies on my pruners along with the conditioner to scrub the hardened plant sap off of the blades. Makes the blades shiny just like your tools.
