Awl --
So ahm standin on my ear over here, tryna find an economical soluble oil.
Sam pointed me to Chevron Soluble Oil B, at about half the price of RustLick and the others.
So then I remembered a company called Silogram (Bayonne, NJ), that delivers its own oil products. Their white soluble oil is an "MW 150" spec, and they charge.... are you ready???? $425 per 55 gal drum, delivered!
The breakpoints are inneresting: very few breakpoints from 5 gals to 55 gal drums, in most of these companies, Silogram being the exception. PrimeLube, in NJ, who carries the Chevron soluble B, wants $72.50/ 5 gal, vs. $69 from Silogram -- pretty good.
But for the 55 gal drum, Primelube wants $759, vs. the $425 from Silogram -- a biggie.
Sorta like pizza -- you rarely get a per-slice break buying the whole pie.... whazzup wit DAT??? And still, the PrimeLube/Chevron is a lot better than the catalog stuff.
Silogram carries a synthetic, at $850/drum, but the guy was pretty upfront, that unless your machining is very demanding (read: high temp, at the cutter, eg, titanium/SS), stick with the above petroleum base.
So, Silogram is a *fraction* of the price I'd be paying for Travers/MSC/Grainger stuff. However, this will benefit only the people in a 50-100 mile radius of Bayonne NJ.
Now, I remember actually using this stuff in my buddy's shop in Brooklyn years ago, and I remember liking it better than some other stuff we wound up getting later on.
The "MW 150" spec sounds like a generic soluble oil spec. What does it mean? Heh, molecular weight??
What specs should one be looking for? Assuming one could afford those specs....
Mobil makes a Mobilcut 102, carried by McMaster, at $112/ 5 gal, a bit cheaper than Rustlick, et al, but not quite Chevron or Silogram.
I'm hoping that the "baseline" of soluble oils is a pretty standard formula, mebbe not the high-falutin best, but usable. Right now, Cheapness is next to Godliness, usability permitting.
Strange, Thomasnet.com lists few companies by me, actually just MSC!! They don't list Silogram or PrimeLube at all, and Silogram tells me dats cuz Thomas is effing *expensive*, thousands of dollars a year, so he stopped his listing, as he wasn't getting any hits. The point being, these types of companies are a bit hard to find.