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Water has zero lubricity. That's what the KoolMist is for Peanut oil works great without injuring the acrylic when you are drilling. Acrylic should always be drilled at slow speed. Peanut oil also works very well as a tapping lubricant. Froggy,

Reply to
Froggy
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Which is why I experimented with vegetable oils over twenty years ago and found that the phenomena is not applicable to peanut oil which can be cleaned up with hot water and soap. Petroleum and other solvent type lubricants attack the acrylic and turn it to powder. There are several vegetable oils that do not do this, peanut oil being the one with which I have the most experience. If one has a problem with peanuts, he will have to do his own research and find something else that works. Try Canola oil made from rape seed. It's poisonous to eat, so maybe you can use it in the shop. Froggy,

Reply to
Froggy

Could this be a chemical interaction with the petroleum products?

Reply to
Steve Caple

Acrylic can be annealed to help relieve internal stress. A couple of hours in an oven can help. Most manufacturers can give detailed info on machining practices. Another option may be to use a polycarbonate such as Lexan

Reply to
Les Pickstock
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Try Canola oil

can use it in the shop.

Is that the same canola oil I get at the grocery store for cooking? Are you thinking of castor oil?

Reply to
<wkaiser

Hi Froggy:

I've not tried the peanut oil, so I won't comment on that.

I disagree that water has "zero lubricity" ... certainly it's not in the same league as most oils, but it can substantially reduce friction. It can even be used as a lubricant in bearings, in various ways. If a rubber sleeve or pad is inserted in the bearing, water serves well as a lunricant. Indeed, such bearings were used in some boat propeller shafts. When cutting plastic, it serves mainly as a coolant, preventing the plastic from melting. It also serves as a barrier film to prevent the soft plastic from sticking to the cutting tool, and does reduce friction.

Friction is a complex issue, and usually comes down to some form of surface welding on a microscopic scale. Most ANY film between the surfaces reduces this adhesion, and reduces friction.

Dan Mitchell ============

Reply to
Daniel A. Mitchell

In some cases that might be true. It would depend on the oil and plastic involved. I've read several comments, studies, or 'papers' on this subject, and there's little agreement. Whether the oil CAUSES the cracks seems undecided. That it WORSENS existing cracks seems certain.

Dan Mitchell ============

Reply to
Daniel A. Mitchell

The exact same oil you get at the market for cooking. Canola oil is made from poisonous rape seed oil. Eat it if you want to, but I won't. Rape seed oil is used predominantly to make non-petroleum industrial lubricants. Its use as a food-product cooking oil is recent. The Canadians say it is fine to eat, but I don't believe them. There is no need to use a poisonous substance to cook your food when there are plenty of them that are not.

Castor oil is made from the beans of the castor plant which is also high in ricin, the same toxin found in rape. I have used castor oil, but it is too "sticky" and does not clean up well. It does, however, work very well as a lubricant for racing engines. Froggy,

Reply to
Froggy

Reply to
Frank Rosenbaum

Froggy et al.-

This appears to be another urban myth -- see:

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or
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David

Reply to
David P Harris

The risk is in using a poisonous seed to make the oil. There is no need to use rape seed, whether "genetically altered" or not to make oil for human or other animal consumption. Making it "safe" does not allow for errors in production of the plant or the oil. Better to use a product that does not have to be "engineered" such that it will not kill you. I read all the pros and cons, claims and counter claims, etc. The "Antis" win this time. Snopes loses this round. I am not going to test every bottle of canola oil that I buy and I am not going to trust the producers to police themselves to ensure that rigid safety standards are continuously met, and that no rape seed of the "wrong kind" gets into the pipeline, etc., etc., etc. There is simply no rational reason to take any risk whatever in this matter. Use another kind of oil that has no chance whatever of killing you. All problems solved. The only losers are the folks who are trying to sell you potentially poisonous cooking oil so that they can make tons of money. They're your heart, liver, thyroid, colon, and brain. Do whatever you want with them. We start life with no smarts and a whole lot of luck. The object is to get smart before your luck runs out. Froggy,

Reply to
Froggy

in article snipped-for-privacy@news.east.earthlink.net, Froggy @ thepond..com at Froggy @ thepond..com wrote on 10/5/05 7:18 PM:

Froggy, you are the victim of pseudoscience masquerading as consumer protection. The canola scare is 100% nonsense. You can buy whatever products you want, but your belief in the silly canola story should not be the reason.

Reply to
Edward A. Oates

I keep a supply of it next to the tank of oxygen I use for airbrushing!

Reply to
Mark Mathu

LOL! I sure do miss Big John.

Froggy,

Reply to
Froggy

This is an entirely false urban legend:

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Rapeseed oil is not poisonous, period.

I have to say one thing though - canola oil tastes like ass. *

Reply to
Paul Vader

Ed, Froggy has a good point, and you are at least partly wrong. I'm _very_ familiar with canola oil, and the oil growers and processors have pulled the wool over a lot of eyes. When canola (CANadian oil or OLA) was first introduced successfully in the americas after the name change from rapeseed and the accidental mixing of cheap food grade rapeseed and industrial oil which caused a number of deaths in Spain, it was touted as the answer to all the problems of other vegetable oils. In point of fact, it was simply easier and more profitable to produce in Canada and sales of it needed a market push.

Remember when the Center for Whining in the Public Interest got on the backs of movie theatres for using coconut oil? A lot of theatre owners immediately switched over to canola because of perceived public pressure (how's that for forcing a major market and a stock play?) Within a few weeks, the complaints from customers started rolling in. I was there. Up front and in person. I was on the receiving end of those complaints.

Real unsaturated canola (the supposedly healthy stuff) goes rancid extremely rapidly, and smells like dead rotting fish. Rancid oils are essentially free radicals, and are not in any way healthy, nor do they improve the image of popcorn or any other food but dead rotting fish.

Popcorn sales plummeted. Theatres began to smell like the Fulton Fish Market. The theatre industry complained, tried air-popped popcorn in desperation (can you say popped cardboard?), and largely switched out of canola oil to peanut oil, corn oil, blended oils, or back to coconut oil. Eventually, the processors got wise to the rotton fish smell, and resolved the problem. They are _very_ quiet about how that was accomplished, but the only way that seems possible is that they "cracked" it, or started adding hydrogen to partially saturate the oil, thus removing the fraction that could go rancid - and - any the un-rancid unsaturated oil, along with any benefits it held.

During that period of rancid oil, I developed an active food sensitivity (technically, it isn't called an allergy, but is very similar) to the stuff, to the point that eating a few kernels of popcorn cooked in it would send me worshipping the throne, and just walking into a theatre popping corn with it would make me nausious.

Snopes merely touches on this subject with the following caveat:

"Cooking at high temperatures with unrefined rapeseed oil now appears to be related to an increased risk of lung cancer because at high temperatures cooking oil gives off chemicals capable of causing mutations in cells. Unrefined rapeseed oil is particularly notable for this, but other oils also have this association. Those intent upon doing large amounts of wok cooking with any sort of cooking oil should therefore lower their frying temperature from the 240 C to 280 C called for in Chinese cooking to 180 C. "

Popcorn, of necessity, is cooked at a high temperature, and the hot rancid oil vapors are especially foul. Reducing frying temperatures is another "screed" by the Center for Whining in the Public Interest that is picked up as fact without examination. Saturated oils, like coconut oil, can be heated to high temperaures safely.

Thankfully, my reaction to canola isn't as strong after years of avoidance and the change in formulation, but there is no way that anyone will ever convince me that canola is a legitimate GRAS product.

Call it an urban myth or whatever, but I wish the stuff had never been bred/engineered. The only way that I even knew what was being said about canola was that my own experience with it was so violently negative and I was trying to find out why it was making me sick.

Rapeseed was a good oil for a specific purpose - lubrication - although some people are apparently less bothered by erucic acid and rancidity than others. If you can find it, Grapeseed oil IS a good oil for consumption, but it is in short supply and has limited market penetration. Even coconut oil is now being recognized as a "good" oil by those people who don't buy into the "cholesterol is a disease and not a marker of other problems" myth. Remember, when in doubt - follow the money. It leads to remarkable enlightenment on how the markets work.

Again, I had no contact with canola oil before my personal experience, and my personal experiences are independent and pre-date any internet rumors. As a matter of fact, the WWW wasn't even fully developed at that point.

BTW, Snopes seems to claim that since rapeseed is a member of the mustard family, including cabbage, watercress, mustard, and turnips, that it is benign. That is simply sloppy science and reporting. The mango is in the same family as poison ivy. Would they then claim that poison ivy is innocuous? My wife can't eat anything with horseradish, which is in the same family as rapeseed, yet she seems to tolerate rapeseed. People have individual genetic makeups, and outside of blood and tissue typing in transplants, the medical profession and news media largely ignore these differences.

Back on topic, cutting plexi with a bandsaw is a lot more successful for me than trying to use a jigsaw. The constant motion in a single direction seems to reduce chipping and eliminate splits and cracks. YMMV.

Reply to
3D

in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, snipped-for-privacy@electricrailroad.com at snipped-for-privacy@electricrailroad.com wrote on 10/7/05 4:41 PM:

The Froggy complaint was the Canola was Poison: it is not, categorically so.

ALL oils which burn and vaporize at high temperatures produce carcinogens. Peanut and coconut oil have very high burn points and so when used at high temperatures, they produce fewer of those volatile substances; for example, olive oil produces lots of smoke if heated too much, and that vapor is not particularly healthy; in fact, olive oil (and butter, for that matter) catch fire pretty easily if overheated. Most of us are allergic to high heats which are consuming our kitchens.

All that said, I don't particularly like canola oil; but since my daughter is mildly allergic to peanuts and soy, when eating out, we make sure that the kitchen can use olive oil (first choise) or canola oil (second choice) for cooking. They all seem to have olive oil for salad dressings.

Almost all other commercial cooking oils (corn, etc.) use soy oil as an extender; soy is a fine oil unless you are allergic to it.

Reply to
Edward A. Oates

To my body, there is a very fine line between canola as poison and canola as a food sensitivity, which is why I said "you are at least partly wrong" but I agree in general up to the last part. When an oil is labeled as corn oil, the ingredient is corn oil. Vegetable oil is what consists of mixed oils including corn, soy, etc..

In their haste to label coconut oil bad, the center for yada yada. neglected to consider the very real reasons why saturated oils are better in some situations. That is not good science, nor is it in the public interest.

I understand your reticence in endorsing peanut oil. It is a pity that there isn't a universally tolerated monosaturated or unsaturated oil. However, that lack further verifies the point that we all are different and need to be sceptical of generalizations and people speaking not from personal experience but from psuedo-scientific bias.

Reply to
3D

Right.

The term in cooking is 'smoke point'. Canola has one of the lowest smoke points of any cooking oil. Here's a link:

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So, it's not an oil that a sane person would use in a high-temp application such as corn popping. Thank goodness that brief fad is over. *

Reply to
Paul Vader

Is too. :-P I'm not going to eat it, you do as you please.

Froggy,

Reply to
Froggy

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