I tried an old time LARD OIL recipe for cutting steels....

[Ultradog MN]

It seems I remember the name mineral lard oil. I thought we used it as coolant in our machines in the Navy. We would mix it with water at some ratio. I remember it would last pretty well if you used it often but eventually would turn rancid or if not used often would turn rancid pretty fast. Stank. And got gooey. That was 50 years ago so maybe my memory isn't correct.
I also remember Tap Magic. It was new to us and we thought it was fantastic. Yes it would hiss as you used it. If I remember correctly if you used it on aluminum it would corride the metal and ruin the threads. Another old school product we still used in Navy machine shop school was white lead for lube on dead centers. It worked okay. But when we got to the ship it was all live centers so I don't recall seing it there.

 

[MilGunsmith]

I remember using Buttercut cutting fluid. I think it was lard oil based. Worked great. I still keep a tin of bacon grease in the shop for tough drilling or tapping jobs. Also woks for baiting mouse traps, soak a piece of string in it and tie to the trigger plate.

 

[GregSY]

"Classic republican dodge - privatize the profits and make somebody else clean up your shit."

Classic Democrat dodge - launch an accusation with no proof or even good evidence, and lay the blame at the feet of evil white corporations. All that's left is to get a celebrity of color to spout off about it.

 

[Trueturning]

Heating up lead and pouring it into the mold to make a brand new lead hammer.

 

[Ultradog MN]

You sir are a scurrilous fool.

 

[BobH]

Heating up lead and pouring it into the mold to make a brand new lead hammer.

Still do that.

 

[Ultradog MN]

Yeah, they identified it was a potent carcinogen. WR Grace Corp dumped many 55 gallon drums of trichlor into waste pits and badly contaminated the aquifer that Woburn, MA drew it's water from. Classic republican dodge - privatize the profits and make somebody else clean up your shit.

Woburn, Massachusetts - Wikipedia

Disclosure: I worked at a plant in Waltham, where there was an employee whos job was to do GCA-mass spec analysis. As a lark, he ran some of his house's tap water as a sample in his system. Oh look: trichlor. Where did that come from? Off to the races.

You sir are a scurrilous troll!

 

[4GSR]

................................................
. I still have fantasies of finding an NOS can or two, heh.

I still have a couple cans of it here somewhere for emergencies. Keep on fantasizing!!!

 

[eKretz]

I still have a couple cans of it here somewhere for emergencies. Keep on fantasizing!!!

Put me in your will, I can wait.

 

[eKretz]

It seems I remember the name mineral lard oil. I thought we used it as coolant in our machines in the Navy. We would mix it with water at some ratio. I remember it would last pretty well if you used it often but eventually would turn rancid or if not used often would turn rancid pretty fast. Stank. And got gooey. That was 50 years ago so maybe my memory isn't correct.

You're probably thinking of water soluble oil coolant. You've described it to a tee. Looked about like milk. Smelled about like ass, heh.

 

[jim rozen]

"...accusation with no proof or even good evidence, and lay the blame at the feet of evil white corporations. A...

WR Grace was found guilty and paid a small fine. There was evidence and proof and I don't know who owns them but don't care. They were criminals and
paid a small price. Stop while you are ahead.

Several of the men I worked with, had formerly worked at Grace. Fabulous stories. They had sulfur delivered to one of the plants, and it is shipped molten, in heated tanker trucks. Driver began pumping it out at the site, went in for a cup of coffee. The hose blew off and the entire load was pumped out into the parking lot, which was in a sort of a depressed basin. The sulfur cooled and locked all the employees' cars in place. Sulfur breaks down rubber tires. They had to jackhammer all the cars loose and buy everyone new tires.

Then there was the story about the 55 gallon drum for waste solvents and pump oil in the backyard at the Grace site. It had pickaxe holes in the bottom so it never filled up.

And the story about the Alewife subway station which was being constructed while I was in the area. Grace had polluted the area badly with acidic materials, so much so they concrete would not set up. So they had to hire a firm to develop a special concrete that was low pH tolerant. Guess who got paid to do this? Yep, WR Grace! Irony.

 

[M.B. Naegle]

A couple years ago, I delved into making belt dressing for my flat-belt adventures (still need to make a thread about it). I recall reading that if your lard/tallow/fat has any color to it, that's traces of meat or other fleshy material and THAT's what goes rancid. If you filter and reduce it to the point that it's all clear or white, then it lasts much longer and it's the fat you want anyway, not the other bio-matter. This stuff was never refrigerated years ago and seemed to do ok out on the kitchen counter.

My belt dressing was a mixture of beef tallow, rosin, pumice, castor oil, pine tar and and some other stuff. I cast it into a couple paper tubes wrapped in wax paper and it still hasn't changed smell or consistency sitting out in the open in humid Texas, so I assume it hasn't gone bad.

Shop Cookery and Chemistry is fun. I found an old old shop handbook recently with a bunch of "recipes" in it that I'm still thumbing through. Stuff like mixing oils, paints, and other coatings and fluids. A lot of this stuff uses the same base ingredients. All stuff that you could find on the homestead, general store, or feed supply company (although Dollar General's selection is lacking these days...). As I find different recipes, I like to record them in the blank pages and margins of some of my old shop handbooks (unless they're already in there of course).

The health and safety aspect of things like this is of course a real concern, but IMO it's most frustrating with things become unavailable and nothing really fills the void. It helps to know what exactly is in our "stuff" as you become better educated about things that work and things that don't. If all we do is live off of what the salesman or politician feeds us, we often end up with inferior goods that lack in some aspects, but "it's cheaper and still KINDA works!" For better or worse, so much commercialization involves consolidating information to make it simpler for us the consumers. If all we want is a taping fluid, then that's all we'll get. If we put some effort into knowing how and why some work better than other, we can make more informed decisions. It also helps to have a basic understanding of how things in the world work. It gets harder the more complicated the world gets, but every time you decide to "leave something to the professionals," or ignore an issue because "it doesn't involve me", you're cutting yourself short. With social media especially, eventually people WILL have an opinion on matters that don't directly effect them, but by that point they're getting their opinions from the most biased sources with the most emotional decisions, and then sharing those opinions with the next guy in line.

I have an optimistic outlook on the natural world in that everything in this world has a place and application. If some things are dangerous, that doesn't mean we need to eliminate them, but rather change how we use them. "Unsafe" things like radioactive metals, lead, fossil fuels, tobacco, etc. all have a safe use. Sometimes it takes a fair amount of science and MINOR government leadership to figure it out, but hysteria and blanket bans don't help. We also need to avoid demonizing people of the past as our understanding of this world is always growing. Corrupt business men and politicians have always existed, but not every 1800's shop owner who told their workers to bathe in mercury was a villain.

 

[excello]

Another "memory lane" cutting fluid with trichloroethane: Monroe COOL TOOL. Loved that stuff!
We kind of rationed out the last gallon can in the shop to make it last.
The newer COOL TOOL without the trichlor. just didn't seem to work as well.


excello

 

[ManicMetalBasher]

#17
"Yeah, they identified it was a potent carcinogen. WR Grace Corp dumped many 55 gallon drums of trichlor
into waste pits and badly contaminated the aquifer that Woburn, MA drew it's water from.
Classic republican dodge - privatize the profits and make somebody else clean up your shit."

One example, from many you could have adduced, where damage was done to the environment.
In some cases there was concomitant damage both to the health of those who worked in the factories (eg Asbestos),
those who lived near the factories (eg Bhopal), and to those who used the products.
This attitude and problem has not yet been solved Google are trying to patent anything and everything.
Monsanto, QED.

Environmental issues in Russia - Wikipedia

"Many of the issues have been attributed to policies that were made during the early Soviet Union,
at a time when many officials felt that pollution control was an unnecessary hindrance to economic
development and industrialization, and, even though numerous attempts were made by the Soviet
government to alleviate the situation in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the problems were not completely solved.[1]
By the 1990s, 40% of Russia's territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress,
largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility,
pollution, and nuclear waste.[2] According to Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment,
Russia is currently warming 2.5 times faster than the rest of the globe"

See also
Environmental issues in China - Wikipedia

Or search for the most polluted state - East Germany.

What these three states have/had in common is/was a)Communism b)The rulers did not give a fuck about the environment or the working conditions c)Mass murder, collectively about 80 million people. This attitude was present in every state unlucky enough to suffer from the non-solution offered by Lenin et al.

I think the thread is more balanced now.

 

[jim rozen]

#17
... b)The rulers did not give a fuck about the environment ....

In the case I cited, it was WR Grace that was the ruler there. They increased their profits by dumping their chem waste into a public utility: the Aberjona aquifer. Privatize the profits, make the expenses (cleaning up and getting alternative water sources) publicly owned. That's wrong. Always was, always will be.

Lard oil? I get mine from Sigma or Alrdrich chemical. Purified lard oil so all the things that make it rancid are gone. 50/50 mix with odorless kerosene and it's cutting fluid for brush on use, tapping turning and milling.

 

[Mtndew]

Probably mostly because it goes bad fast.

I remember the first time I tried the old formula Tap Magic with the 1,1,1 trichloroethane. That stuff was amazing. I still have fantasies of finding an NOS can or two, heh.

Man that stuff was the best!
It was cold too if you got it on your skin. Ahh and that smell.

 

[TedinNorfolk]

Next time you have the trots,just check your wife hasn't used it in her cooking

 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Another couple throwbacks I remember using: White and red lead... We had shop-made tapping fluid and dead center lube from that.

When I was an apprentice the fitter I was working with and myself were called to a really hot phosphor bronze bearing on a rubber mill. This roll journal was about 12” in diameter.The old guy said to me - “ Go to the main stores and get 4 lbs of white lead and a pint of castor oil. “ When I came back with it he mixed it all together in a bucket. He drained off the “cream” at the top of the bucket and pumped it into the bearing until you could see it running out of the bottom of the bearing. This was whilst the mill was running. He used the large “ Staufer “ fitted to the bearing. After about 15 minutes he got the “ butter “ out of the bottom of the bucket and pumped that into the bearing. Within 1/2 hr of that the bearing was running cold.

The same guy later sent me to the stores for red lead and castor oil. That was to make jointing paste for when we were re-fitting the journal flange on a huge steam heated calender roll. We mixed that up in a bucket also. We only used the paste and there was quite a bit of castor oil and red lead fluid left over. One of the women, a Ukrainian shot putter type , who worked in the department came over and asked me if she could have what was left. She wanted it to paint the underside of her car with it apparently !

That was in about 1968. Later on both red and white lead were banned apparently.

Regards Tyrone.

 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Another couple throwbacks I remember using: White and red lead... We had shop-made tapping fluid and dead center lube from that.

Sorry, double post.

Regards Tyrone.

 

[daryl bane]

It is interesting to read about Lard turning rancid. I have a package in the fridge that is about 15 yrs old. No mold , no smell, looks like the day I bought it. Maybe at room temp it will spoil eventually.