Petroeum grease

And the reason is: Synthetics are better! Why old grease?

Lithium grease *is* a petroleum grease. Greases are thickened oils. The thickener is usually a mineral soap, sodium or lithium soaps being the most common.

Old fashioned grease would be hog fat or lard.

Ned Simmons

Oh... just things like my hand crank drills, vise lead screws, whatever other things like that need it. I'd like a thick grease that stays for a long time. Just for the most basic uses. Thanks.

Alex

Thanks Ned I didn't know that, I thought all the greases in auto parts shops were synthetic because of the premiums on the oil market. "DAMWITT"... I just did.

Alex

|| ||> Lithium grease *is* a petroleum grease. Greases are ||> thickened oils. The thickener is usually a mineral soap, ||> sodium or lithium soaps being the most common. ||> Old fashioned grease would be hog fat or lard. ||>

||>

||Thanks Ned I didn't know that, I thought all the greases in auto parts shops were ||synthetic because of the premiums on the oil market. "DAMWITT"... I just did.

Maybe what you are looking for is "Fiber" wheel bearing grease, recommended for non-disc brake vehicles.

Otherwise, your best best is Lubriplate.

Texas Parts Guy

Your chemistry is a bit confused.

Petroleum grease is simply petroleum, distilled for heavy fractions. It is not the oily weight fractions. No soap, no sodium, no lithium. Aka petrolatum or Vaseline, just like in your medicine cabinet. The machine version may have additives or impurities that give it color and odor different from white petrolatum. It is a microcrystalline wax. It melts easily and therefore is not much good for things like bearings that can get warm.

Petroleum oils can be gelled (a colloid, not just blended) with metallic soaps (Ca, Na, Li, others including Pb). The chief advantage is a high melting point and lower flammability, vs the very low melting point and flammability of petroleum grease, which is critical for bearings. If you gel gasoline, instead of oil, with aluminum soap, you get a splendidly flammable grease known as "Napalm."

Cf _Kirk-Other Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology_, "Petroleum", "Driers and Metallic Soaps".

Hard to beat NeverSieze, but it is messy.

As mentioned in the "other" forum,

Yeah I know about them. Long time now, but I won't pay shipping for small things unless it's absolutely neca_ssary. Posting a "link" on it's own is not actual 'help'. The 'help' would be about finding the right product, name and brand. Anyone can search the 'net and wind up finding mcmastercarr.com.

Alex

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:11:22 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@txol.net ( snipped-for-privacy@txol.net) calmly ranted:

If he gets that, I hope he doesn't use it on disc brakes. They create enough heat to melt/vaporize the old stuff. That's been known to take the end of a spindle clean off, so a trip down the freeway turns into Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

I used to use that fiber grease as a good gasket sealer before the silicone goops came out. It allowed me to remove the old part without pieces of the gasket sticking to both sides.

And their white grease was used by me in door lube, window channel lube, antenna lube, etc. The type I got was quite thin, like a very heavy-bodied whipped cream. (Dunno 'bout the taste.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - If God approved of nudity, we all would have been born naked. ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

You're quibbling over semantics here and I don't think you'll find any clear agreement between various sources. "Materials Handbook" describes petrolatum as petroleum jelly and makes no mention mention of petroleum grease under "Petrolatum".

Valvoline MULTIPURPOSE 612 PETROLEUM GREASE, as described in this MSDS, is a lithium grease, not a heavy petroleum fraction.

Ned Simmons

Alex, The grease on my 1936 vintage mixer dried out. 1936 mixers are pretty old-fashioned. It was originally packed with lithium soap based grease. Which means that the lithium soap base is what carries the oil. The oil leaks out and lubricates the working parts. Could it be that tar mixed with oil will get you a totally petroleum based grease? ERS

The OP sez "old fashioned petroleum grease", not lithium, whatever anybody else calls it. No quibble for me to explain the difference.

Yes, its called petroleum jelly, petrolatum, Vaseline, if you refine out the dark smelly stuff. Not just a mix or blend, but a colloid of hydrocarbon oils and waxes from petroleum, chiefly the methane series CnH2n+2 for large n.

What he said was "old fashioned petroleum *axle* grease". It's quite clear he was asking about soap-thickened mineral oil, not petrolatum.

Ned Simmons

Usually with an admixture of flour to control the consistency.

--RC

Sleep? Isn't that a totally inadequate substitute for caffine?

Heh. I almost *did* know about it.

I worked summers as a kid as a mechanic in a bicycle shop. There was a Dairy Queen nearby and occasionally ice cream would show up.

One day one of the other mechanics was distributing white lithium grease - not lubriplate, but a thicker concoction that came in a large can - to smaller containers for each of the wrenches to use.

He came up to me with the dairy queen spoon that he was using to transfer the stuff, and proceeded to offer it up to me at my mouth. I was heading in for the gulp when he quickly pulled it back, and the entire shop broke out in laughter. I hadn't seen what he was doing, I though it *was* ice cream!

Jim

Could you use clay? Especially bentonite? The structure is fine plates (dunno if they are soft comparable to graphite), sure it'd be abrasive, but with fine stuff (bentonite is colloidial) it oughta work. Hey, good enough for well drilling! ;)

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

Wheel axle grease should do it - maybe you need to talk to a Oil distributor - but you might have to buy 5 gallons - maybe a gallon.

You might look at the grease gun tube refils for the little grease guns. Martin