The beginners dilemma

Heh.. I showed the engineering flowchart to my GF. Her reply: "WD40 isn't a lubricant, it's a solvent." I was so proud... :sweat_smile:

(Shortly followed by: "...what? I know stuff.")

Jantje:
For instance why does my sliding door slide lots easier when I spray "the hard to reach nearly fully enclosed wheels" with WD40? :astonished:

Collected dirt/dust that the WD cleans out.

Also don't oil bicycle chains except to soak them overnight once a year if you haven't stretched it past usefulness by then. For everyday or weekly cleaning, run the chain through a kerosene soaked rag. Oil on a chain catches dirt and grit that wears the bearings. This from someone that did stretch chains and snap teeth off cogs from a year or less of constant wear.

Collected dirt/dust that the WD cleans out.

And that is, indeed, one of the things it is good for.

I had a car with a sticky seatbelt latch. OK when the weather was really dry, but bad when it was damp. Which was a lot of the time, 30 minutes south of Seattle, WA. Sniffing it told me it was some kind of cola spilled in it, probably multiple times.

So I hosed it out with 409 (water based cleaner/degreaser) on stream to wash it out, then WD40 to rinse out all the water. No oil added. Worked great.

GoForSmoke:
Also don't oil bicycle chains except to soak them overnight once a year if you haven't stretched it past usefulness by then. For everyday or weekly cleaning, run the chain through a kerosene soaked rag. Oil on a chain catches dirt and grit that wears the bearings. This from someone that did stretch chains and snap teeth off cogs from a year or less of constant wear.

I've been using this stuff on my road bike and am pretty happy with it:
http://www.finishlineusa.com/products/chain-lubricants/dry-lube

A couple times a year, I'll take the chain off, give it a thorough de-greasing and cleaning and and also clean what I can off the sprockets by working a rag between them. Just finished a fairly complete tear-down plus replaced the tires so it looks almost factory-new ATM :smiley:

First port of call, Wikipedia.
Second Snopes Can WD-40 Really Do All That? | Snopes.com :smiley:

When I worked in a gun shoppe, we used to get guys that went shooting "once in a blue moon", they'd come in with their pride and joy that had been sitting in the cupboard for months, the pre-storage treatment was WD-40/RP-7/CRC .

The poor rifle would be gummed up tight as a

That wasn't too bad, you could normally free up the action with a good soak in turps or diesel.

The real worry was Greek or Italian blokes who had LIBERALLY applied olive oil!

Once the volatile bits of olive oil have evaporated what you're left with looks and behaves like epoxy!!

I had to boil a semi-auto .22 every day for nearly 2 weeks before I could get the thing apart!

cyberteque:
When I worked in a gun shoppe, we used to get guys that went shooting "once in a blue moon", they'd come in with their pride and joy that had been sitting in the cupboard for months, the pre-storage treatment was WD-40/RP-7/CRC .

The poor rifle would be gummed up tight as a

That wasn't too bad, you could normally free up the action with a good soak in turps or diesel.

The real worry was Greek or Italian blokes who had LIBERALLY applied olive oil!

Once the volatile bits of olive oil have evaporated what you're left with looks and behaves like epoxy!!

I had to boil a semi-auto .22 every day for nearly 2 weeks before I could get the thing apart!

This is why my "once in a blue moon" gun is a Mosin Nagant. Whenever it sticks, I just have to hit it with a hammer. No solvents required.

  1. Lubricates noisy door hinges on vehicles and doors in homes.
  2. Lubricates and stops squeaks in electric fans.

Bullshot Crummond. In both of these instances, in my own experience and that of other people I've known, this is only true very temporarily. My father destroyed the door hinges on my car because, unbeknownst to me, he was hosing out my door hinges with WD40 every time I came to visit. I kept regreasing my hinges, not knowing why it kept disappearing, but WD40 washed out all traces of the grease and got them grinding again. After around a year of this (I don't know when he started doing this), I could only close the driver's side door if I lifted it up.

I've used it to lubricate squeaky door hinges, only to later have them get even worse. A couple drops of 3 in 1 oil fixed it.

I tried it on some stiff fan bearings. Sure, it clean them out, but left them basically dry. In a relatively short time, they started squalling. A little 3 in 1 oil extended the life. For those fan bearings, I've found a good light spray cleaner to work well, let dry, then followed by a few drops of 3 in 1 or sewing machine oil.

I've repaired electronics that people have sprayed WD40 into. Pots that have seized up, sliding pots especially. Cassette decks with swollen rubber and no oil in the bearings. VCRs that stink of WD40 because someone just opened the door and hosed it down due to a squeak, or because someone told them to clean their VCR heads that way.

It has its uses, but a lubricating oil it is not. It bugs me when people treat anything as a panacea.

BTW, if you have someone working on your furnace or ducting and you see them using cloth fabric "duct" tape (actually duck tape) on it, fire them on the spot because they don't know what they are doing. Hire someone else in, ask to see his/her roll of duct tape. Only if it is actual aluminum tape, have them check the other person's work and complete the repair.

What everyone calls "duct" tape is really duck tape, invented to make quick, temporary waterproof repairs to things like ammo cans and such for WW2. As anyone who has ever used it on anything outdoors knows, it breaks down quickly in heat and cold. As anyone who has used it or had someone else use it to tape down an extension cord knows, it becomes this sticky mess that is nearly impossible to entirely remove. That's why roadies use gaffer tape, even though it is much more expensive.

If there are no moving parts to stick, olive oil is great! I use it on my fencing blades, very thin coat.

There is or was a duct tape used by people who made and installed air ducts. It is or was more permanent than the cheap cloth tape substitutes sold in retail stores today.

Gaffer's tape... now that's like gold, or at least it used to be.

Yes, real Duct tape is aluminum foil tape, not aluminum -colored- plastic/fabric tape.

On my bicycle I use chain wax, great stuff!

My "friend" needed to borrow my bike to fetch a puncture kit for his, so he took mine.

Came back, says "Your chain was squeaking, I lubed it with WD-40"

I was not happy

On the OT,

Since I was a child I have seen most people reach a certain age where looking words up in a close to hand dictionary becomes near-impossible. It's an attitude. Once you finish school, you become a completed adult. From there, looking things up is like admitting that you are not. And yes, I got told the "finished high school, know everything that matters" spiel many times back in the days.

Now we have the internet. Someone can be online asking for help and given links to fully prepared sites chock full of perfectly good and often illustrated explanations that they don't have to get off their... seats... to access, they still demonstrate a failure to even begin to absorb as much as a few terms.

"Here's a plate of food" gets "I can't use a fork, knife or spoon. Feed me.".

I'm happy to say that I have been able to help people not at all like that. If they get stuck and you give them a little help, they figure it out and get going.

It's the others that get me.

But as I note, this is nothing new. It's just that with easy net access we have idiots where we did not before.

GoForSmoke:
On the OT,

Since I was a child I have seen most people reach a certain age where looking words up in a close to hand dictionary becomes near-impossible. It's an attitude. Once you finish school, you become a completed adult. From there, looking things up is like admitting that you are not. And yes, I got told the "finished high school, know everything that matters" spiel many times back in the days.

Now we have the internet. Someone can be online asking for help and given links to fully prepared sites chock full of perfectly good and often illustrated explanations that they don't have to get off their... seats... to access, they still demonstrate a failure to even begin to absorb as much as a few terms.

"Here's a plate of food" gets "I can't use a fork, knife or spoon. Feed me.".

I'm happy to say that I have been able to help people not at all like that. If they get stuck and you give them a little help, they figure it out and get going.

It's the others that get me.

But as I note, this is nothing new. It's just that with easy net access we have idiots where we did not before.

Google and wikipedia are dangerous things...

Hi, my step daughter (now 25yo) came out of primary school (years 0 to 6) and still did not know what clockwise and anti-clockwise WAS!!! (Digital time taught)
Also she would take time to even work out 6 times 7, then when asked immediately after it, 7 times 6, she would take time and work it out AGAIN!!!! (They never had to memorise multiplication tables or anything,)

Tom...... :slight_smile:

So major politician material then? Might rule the country some day?

TomGeorge:
Hi, my step daughter (now 25yo) came out of primary school (years 0 to 6) and still did not know what clockwise and anti-clockwise WAS!!! (Digital time taught)

My father taught me "Turn to the right to make it tight." That works...until you find a left-handed thread!

Also she would take time to even work out 6 times 7, then when asked immediately after it, 7 times 6, she would take time and work it out AGAIN!!!! (They never had to memorise multiplication tables or anything,)

They're taught to rely on calculators, but if they miss-key, or use the wrong formula, they'll never know they've got the wrong answer!
Earlier today I wanted to convert US$42 into pounds Sterling. I know that $1 is approx. £0.65. Being lazy, I fired up the calculator and entered 42/0.65. Woops. That can't be right! Face-palm! I meant 42 * 0.65. Would any one who had not been taught basic arithmatic have spotted that or would they have assumed the first answer was correct?

cyberteque:
On my bicycle I use chain wax, great stuff!

Ditto. Soak in solvent. Wash with soap and water. Apply the wax.

TomGeorge:
Also she would take time to even work out 6 times 7, then when asked immediately after it, 7 times 6, she would take time and work it out AGAIN!!!!

That has Left-Brain Fixation stamped all over it.
Too much emphasis on FOCUS which is what schools have done ever more since long ago.
When kids don't get out to play and interact with the world, it makes it worse.
When focus gets all the praise then that is what gets developed.

GoForSmoke:

TomGeorge:
Also she would take time to even work out 6 times 7, then when asked immediately after it, 7 times 6, she would take time and work it out AGAIN!!!!

That has Left-Brain Fixation stamped all over it.
Too much emphasis on FOCUS which is what schools have done ever more since long ago.
When kids don't get out to play and interact with the world, it makes it worse.
When focus gets all the praise then that is what gets developed.

RSA ANIMATE: The Divided Brain - YouTube

Where Focus = lack of lateral thinking (How else can I do this?)