Homemade Thread-Lock Goop?

any mixture that someone makes will probably cost more than the small tube of loctite that you buy at any hardware store....

If they're steel.......use salt water......

Sven, a toolmaker at my first workplace whom I grew to know and respect , used that trick when he'd reamed a dowel pin hole a smidgen oversize. He got some salt from the lunch table, wet the parts with salt water and rammed the pin home. A few days later that pin would be, (his woirds) "As tight as a bull's arse in fly season."

I remember learning somewhere that iron oxide occupies more space than the iron it's made from. That's a pretty good explanation for why stuff rusts up so damn tight.

Jeff

-- Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"If you can keep smiling when things go wrong, you've thought of someone to place the blame on."

Sure, this is my secret recipe:

First off, begin disassembling a critical device out in the garage, right before it's going to either drop into the teens, or start pouring monsoon rain.

Then while re-assembling the item you have to drop one of the irreplacium fasteners into the pile of leaf debris, grit, concrete dust, and depending on the season, mud snow or ice.

The most important part of this is to be absolutely SURE that the fastener in question is fully greased up.

Then go down in the shop and search for an hour for a new replacement fastener. Not forthcoming, of course.

Then spend two more hours sifting thru the garage floor to find the one you just lost. By the time it's found the temperature will be below the teens and/or the flooding will have commenced.

Install fastener immediately, while it is coated with the patented, all purpose Rozen-Loc (tm) which absolutely fixes the fastener permanently in place - removeable only with dynamite.

Seriously though you can get a tiny tube of red locktite at any hardware or autopart store, single application. Use it, throw the rest out. That stuff really really works.

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

I'm going to get laughed at or boo'd ... I just know it.

Use clear fingernail polish. I've used it quite a few times in a pinch for eyeglasses and other small screw assemblies. I've never tried it on anything bigger because I had LockTite.

--Geroge

BWAHAHAHA!!! Oh... wait... I use that too... ;-)

I find that it works well for small things, and is not permanent, but you may have to re-apply it once in a while....

Plus, the really, really neat thing about loctite is that you can leave it for future generations, and it'll be just as good as ever when the mole-people dig it up in 8 thousand years. (well, at least a few decades) If it's in the bottle with some air, it doesn't go off.

Lock-tite comes in different grades, depending on whether you plan to disassemble it later, and also on how much clearance you are dealing with. Naturally, anything you come up with on your own will not match your requirements as well as the real stuff, but I have used: shellac, CA glue, paint, printers ink, whatever is handy. They all work, more or less.

If it's just for basic thread locking work (ie to stop someting unthreading without the application of tools) then I've had success using: CA (Krazy glue I think it's called in US), Nail polish (most colours except the metallics due to the glitter in it), PVA (white glue), Dope (Nitrocellouse - used in model aricraft applications).. Another option is to consider slightly upsetting one of the threads with a light touch with a centre punch etc

I remember reading about a feedwater heater used in a marine application. They said the seams were rust sealed, by applying a paste of sal ammoniac to the mating surfaces then bolting them together. Sounds dreadful but must have worked at least until some poor bastard had to disassemble it.

"Loren Coe"

Even the toughest of tattooed bikies carries a small bottle of nail varnish - not because they like to paint their nails and look sexy - but to use as screw lock on their Harleys. Now this is where I might be dead wrong, but I think the American bikes still use imperial threads which have coarser threads and thus shake loose quicker than metric threads in those faster but soul-less jap bikes. This should start a good fight.

Dean, ( yes, I can hear cowboy movie punches and windows smashing at the roadhouse already )

I have often used the fingernail polish thing, as well as spray paint or sometimes just center punching and deforming a thread.

-- Visit my website: Remove nospam for correct address http:// snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com Contents: foundry and general metal working and lots of related projects. Regards Roy aka Chipmaker // Foxeye Opinions are strictly those of my wife....I have had no input whatsoever. Remove nospam from email address

actually for critical applications Loctite only guaranties their product for the period on one year. From the date of shipment.

Loose hold: one hit on the end of the bolt with a ball-pien hammer. Snug hold: two hits. And so on....

his next question will be how to make your own nail polish as i will only use it one in a blue moon.........

Wrong! i _have_ nail polish, clear. doesn't every rcm'r? i will just put it on the cap for a start, never tried it on threads.

the staking thing is good for future ref., but not suitable here, an aluminum storm door. wrt sugar/oil, that's new to me, will file it with this post. thanks to you guys(!), & Happy Holidays, --Loren

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 20:01:51 -0700, "Randy Quanstrom" brought forth from the murky depths:

Heat melts sugar.

========================================================== CAUTION: Do not use remaining fingers as pushsticks! ==========================================================