In another thread, I discussed one aspect of the alt-azimuth mount of an 80mm Meade Model 312 telescope, namely the fine adjustment controls of the mount. In this posting, I'm interested in another aspect of the mount. The mount can rotate on a certain base shaped roughly like a frustrum of a cone. The base has a cylindrical chamber at the top and the bottom of the mount is a matching cylindrical tube that drops into it. It is not a perfect cylinder: the outer diameter of the cylinder has been reduced at one place to allow a set screw in the conical base to penetrate it. This prevents one from removing the mount from the base without loosening the screw, but at the same time allows the mount to rotate.
When one removes the mount, one smells the lubricant that is used between the cylindrical chamber of the base and the matching cylindrical tube but I don't recognize the smell. The fit is snug and it doesn't rotate quickly, and that might indicate the preferred lubricant. At any rate, what I'd like to know is how to identify the lubricant without having to guess at it. This question is motivated in part by trying to learn how things are done by studying finished products and in part motivated by a desire to know how to maintain and repair the scope if, unlikely as it seems, anything happened to the lubrication and I wanted to replenish it.
There are other parts of the scope that have knobs for adjustment and which are either rusty (e.g. set screws in the fine adjustment mechanism) or which tend to get stuck in certain places (for example, the knob and rack for extending or retracting the eyepiece). Ultimately I'll be interested in cleaning and lubricating those parts, which I also don't know much about.