doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com To Chuck H.

Grease and or oil do not "attract" dirt. How could it? The obvious solution is to frequently wipe out the dirt and old lube and replace it with new, clean stuff. Moving parts must be lubricated or they will wear out, prematurely. You're surely entitled to your opinion but this frequently stated idea is simply wrong. With respect.

Oil may not "attract", but certainly is able to bind, dirt to the thing lubed. One of the reasons for soaking a bike chain in melted parafine is that the heated parafine gets into the linkpin bushes and sheds off the exterior. A parafine-lubed bike chain may rust after rain but is lubed where it counts. Your average stinking chain dipped in 30wgt. won't rust but it's stretched and worn out anyway from lack of lube where it counts.

jack

I have a small oil bottle produced sometime prior to 1900 with the following label intact;
Pure
CACHALOT OIL
for
Sewing Machines
Manufactured from the
Oily Matter Contained in
the head of the Cachalot
or Spermaceti Whale
Prepared for the
WEED
Sewing Machine Co
by
CT & C Sheppard
New LOndon Ct

This was I believe some of the finest sperm oil ever produced. Oils which were produced by rendering out the fat (blubber) at this point in time were mostly used for il;luminating purposes. As time went by & less & less sperm oil was needed for lamp-lighting & sperm whales became in shortewr supply, more & more of the rendered oil was sold for lubrication purposes. This oil had a tendency to try to return to its former state, & thus would thicken or even gel over time & gum up fine mechanisms. Only that which was tapped from the whale in liquid form could really be considered of top grade. All this came from the head of the whale. A much, much larger supply could be obtained by "Cooking Out" the fat, but a much inferior oil was produced.
I have a bottle of some of the last readily obtainable sperm oil & it is near solid in the bottom. I had some in a small oil can I obtained years ago for keeping oil for my guns & fishing reels in & it totally clogged up the spout so I had to give it a good cleaning before it could be put back to use. Undoubtably this was not of that finest grade of head oil from the whale & I would not at all recommend it for a fine gun mechanism.
That Mobil 1 chassis grease would do a better job as it would retain the consistency it had when applied.

I thought Sperm oil came from farther back on the whale.

Jim;
It all starts in the "Head" . That is where the very highest grade of "Sperm" oil is found. I did a little research on this to find what that word "CACHALOT" meant & found it was essentially the French name for the Sperm Whale. It was said that from a large male sperm whale as much as 350-500 gallons of this high grade liquid oil could be obtained by simply tapping the head cavities & draining it. All other oil was produced by rendering out the fats.

Pipes: Is there a molecular, or other, similarity between sperm oil and automatic trans. fluid? Other than the fact that one replaced the other in transmissions and the Hatcher cleaning formula?

jack

Jack;
All I reallt know about that is what Ed Harris wrote in connection to his "Ed's Red" as a moderization of the Hatcher formula, in that he stated GM's ATF was developed as a synthetic Sperm Oil.

The ATF fluids were primarily petroleum based until recently. They serve a dual duty as a hydraulic fluid and lube. Current Dexron fluid is a syn/petro blend. The stuff is good for temps up to the mid/upper 200F's, but life shortens rapidly as op temps go up.

I can think of better high pressure lubes than ATF. But then, a gun can get by with about any type of lube this side of bacon fat, IMO. All this handwringing and delving into various lube attributes is of little actual value IMO.

Several gents on the Practical Machinist "South Bend" lathe BBS have related their experience using 0W-20 or 5W-20 Mobil 1 synthetic oil. They use it in the headstock reservoir to lubricate the spindle via the capillary action of the two vertical spring wound wicks. Reportedly, the spindle runs cooler with the thin synthetic oil than with the traditionally recommended headstock lubricants.

Miller I've got another bottle of Sperm whale oil. The can nor the bottle show any signs of hardening or clouding....I suspect you had some common whale lamp oil.

The US has a stock pile of Spermaceti...seems Mobile One won't work in a Nuclear Reaction.