PAM Cooking Spray

Forgot the tapping fluid,

If I recall correctly "lard" was commonly used. If you find that round tuit here is an old Machinery's Reference Book on Cutting Lubricants:

All sorts of old concoctions you can experiment with :)

Note that the old reference book talks about lard OIL, not lard.

Lard oil is extracted from lard by separating it from the stearin crystals, which are the component that makes it stiff and pasty. It's the oil that m akes good cutting lube. It used to be a common commodity because it was a c heap replacement for whale oil in lamps. The stearin was (and is) used in m aking candles, but it hampers cutting by keeping the oil from wicking into the cut.

Lard oil is not as good as modern chemical cutting soups but it's pretty go od overall. I still use my old can of Buttercut, with was straight lard oil , for cutting ferrous metals on my lathe. I also use it for threading and t apping in applications that aren't highly demanding. For those, I have a co uple of precious cans of 40-year-old Tap Magic. And for threading hard stee l I still have a half-pint of carbon tet.

But we con't talk about that one. d8-)

I can certainly remember when "lard oil" still used as a cutting lubricant.

I grew up using straight lard. We had the only pipe dies for twenty miles at the time when we got electric power and people discovered that they could have running water like the lucky family who had an elevated storage tank supplied by a water ram in a nearby stream.

Necessity is not the mother of invention...laziness is

That old precious Tapmatic stuff with the chlorinated hydrocarbon solvent worked very well indeed. And you can get stuff that works just as well today. It's made by CRC. It's called TrueTap EV. Instead of containing trichloroETHANE it contains trichloroETHYLENE. It says on the bottle that it works as well as the old stuff and it does as near as I can tell. Especially on 316 SS. Eric

Necessity is not the mother of invention...laziness is

******** My mom told me my grandfather used to say if you want to find the easiest way to way to machine a part give the job to the laziest guy in the shop.

On Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 11:43:55 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@whidbey.com wrot e:

ls, which are the component that makes it stiff and pasty. It's the oil tha t makes good cutting lube. It used to be a common commodity because it was a cheap replacement for whale oil in lamps. The stearin was (and is) used i n making candles, but it hampers cutting by keeping the oil from wicking in to the cut.

good overall. I still use my old can of Buttercut, with was straight lard oil, for cutting ferrous metals on my lathe. I also use it for threading an d tapping in applications that aren't highly demanding. For those, I have a couple of precious cans of 40-year-old Tap Magic. And for threading hard s teel I still have a half-pint of carbon tet.

I'll have to keep that name handy. Thanks, Eric.

Whatever works, Bob. ;)

I found myself needing my tapping machine and got it off the shelf, the first time in something like 7 years. Got it from Gunner. Well, I looked at the bottom of the rotatin' part and I'll be dodgammed if it weren't showing me a gaper. There was nothing to hook a tap into, just about a 3/4" hole.

Then I couldn't find my brand new bottle of TapMagic, so I settled for MMO, which worked extremely well. What a difference from dry. I got my 8 holes punched and threaded in the 0.5x1.25 cold rolled bar stock for extending the solar panel rack (Unistrut) Cold galved it and put 'er together with stainless hardware and anti-seize to last awhile.

Me too, since I still use it.

Pete Keillor