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Comment by stopagephobia | Hacker News Reader

This does not jibe with my experiences or anybody I know's experiences, I think it needs more development. I've had friends who used vegetable oils then they dried out or worse turned rancid and gummed stuff up. Especially bad if a tool is left for a while, or in a hot place, though I guess this is not so much a problem in Europe. This doesn't seem like a significant enough problem to justify that anyway, "thousands of gallons" across a continent is not actually that much.

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When you say they used "vegetable oils", do you mean they used a vegetable oil bought from the grocery store, or that they used one of the blended biodegradable oils specifically made for chainsaws?

I've used both the Stihl Bioplus (https://www.stihlusa.com/products/oils--lubricants-and-fuels...) and Husqvarna XGuard (https://www.baileysonline.com/husqvarna-x-guard-bar-chain-oi...) for a couple years now, and have no complaints other than the price. I do occasionally switch to back to mineral oil when I run out, so perhaps this has helped me to avoid problems.

I'm not familiar with chainsaw oils specifically, but there's a similar trend in gun lubricants, where many (non-military) ones are vegetabe oil blends with additives that are supposed to prevent gumming etc; I suspect these are very similar, if not the same compounds.

There is still an ongoing debate on whether these are good enough etc. On one hand, some people swear by them, and non-toxicity is especially nice when it's going to be heated rapidly right next to your face. On the other hand, there are certainly quite a few recorded cases of things gummied up when stored long term. It appears that the additives do help quite a bit, but it's still a failure mode to consider, unlike synthetic oils.

Tbh I wouldn't worry much about toxicity compared to the shit in GSR. Anecdotally I've never tried it but some people have tried something vegetable and it went sticky anyway. Cleaning guns regularly is enough of a pain in the ass already without maybe having to before going out shooting. I'd also never use it in a CCW or something ready for home defense because of that risk.

FireClean was notorious for trying to shut up a guy who disclosed that it's basically just canola oil with additives. But even so, there are many people who use it without it gumming up. When it happens, it's usually when you store a gun lubricated without using it for a long time.

Christmas tree farms. They plant tiny forests and cut down every tree, running saws for many hours. I grew up near Christmas tree farms in Western Oregon, and its an odd but significant agricultural activity in certain areas. Over multiple plantings the amount of oil sprayed around could cause issues. In the area where I lived some farms have converted to wineries, so that somewhat marginal land does get converted back to food production.

The article says it's not straight vegetable oil, but lubricants "based" on vegetable oil, specifically with additives to address oxidation (going rancid).

If you look at history you'll find that animal and plant oils were used as lubricants for a long time, but were replaced by petroleum specifically because of those problems you noted.

There are drying oils and non-drying oils. Drying oils are what you want to put on your cast iron pan to polymerize the oil into a coating. Tung oil would be a bad choice for chain lubricant because it will gum up, but castor oil should be more suitable for said chain.

I was once an adherent (no pun intended) of this method, but nowadays I saturate my pans with sunflower oil instead.

After every use they get a soapy wipe out, rinse, then a one minute heat with a quarter inch of oil in the pan. The iron just soaks it right up so it’s all ready and greasy for the next fry.

Painting the pans with flaxseed oil leaves an uneven spidery brown pattern. If food sticks to the pan you have to sacrifice some of the coating. It wasn’t a durable solution for me.

A quarter inch? That seems a lot.

Cast iron pans?

Yup. Enough to flow over the base of the cast iron pan without any gaps.

When you heat the pan you can see the water bubble out of the iron pores. I let it cool, wipe it out, and hang it up.

I just use a few drops of canola oil, wipe it down, then heat it up enough for any water to start evaporating. By the time it cools, it’s dry. Unless I’m missing something, this uses ~ 1000x less oil. It also avoids build up of oil.

I’d expect your cast iron to become sticky / blistered over time, though I haven’t tried the oil you use.

> 1000x

Impressive estimate!

My 25cm wide cast iron of mine just absorbed 0.185g of sunflower oil.

Apparently that's a layer 4 microns thick, or 1500x less than what the quarter inch I put in the pan:

  $ units '(1inch/4) / ((0.185g / (921kg/m^3)) / (pi*(25cm/2)^2))'
  Definition: 1551.7849

Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws.

There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.

Same with guitar players and fingerboard oils. Use mineral oil because it's food-safe and won't go rancid. Same reason I use it on my cutting board.

Mineral oil is fine for a fingerboard, but there is a caveat. Being a non-drying oil, it won't dry and nothing will stick to it. So if you put mineral oil once, it is mineral oil forever. If you try to put linseed oil or tung oil on it later, it will not adhere.

I use boiled linseed oil and beeswax on the fingerboards of guitars I've built. Linseed oil is a drying oil which will polymerize when it reacts with air instead of going rancid like food oils.

Drying oils or mineral oil should both work for the job as long as you do not try to mix them.

Wait a moment. Mineral oils are food-safe?

Don't they accumulate in the body and act as endocrine disruptors?

Mineral oil is commonly used to coat/maintain butcher block cutting boards, and as a storage coating on high carbon knives. It is recognized as safe by the FDA when produced according to food safety guidelines and under quality control.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr...

Food-grade mineral oil is highly refined and doesn't contain any of the carcinogenic aromatics. It could be considered a lower molecular weight petroleum jelly. It's also used as a laxative.

To my knowledge it can absorb a little through the skin but not through the intestines though more than a little will give you the shits real bad.

https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-153865/mineral-oil-laxati...

Isn't a certain degree of gumming-up advantageous? It would keep the oil in place after it works it's way into all the nooks and crannies, ending up more like a grease. This behaviour could be good for corrosion prevention.

You want your oil (and grease) in the bearing surfaces, not in nooks and crannies. Tackiness can indeed be good though.

Oxidized vegetable oil is the most disgustingly tacky substance that I know. It's like a cross between rubber, glue, and grease. It is very resistant to removal with "intuitive" methods (but using un-oxidized oil and heat tends to work) and it doesn't lubricate, it sticks. It can't possibly be good for lubrication, I'd say. Unless you can somehow control the process so that it oxidizes just a little.

Well a slimy sticky surface rubbing against another slimy sticky surface doesn't cause wear.

And in a chainsaw, it's mostly wear you want to reduce. The frictional losses in the chain are low compared to the massive friction in the blades.

That's not how vegetable oils gum, they go sticky in a way that's not like grease. Hard to explain but if you feel them both there's a huge difference. Grease will stick but isn't stick-y in the same way if that makes sense.

That's a very strange rumor since 3in1 is petroleum-based.

Rumor dispelled. Thanks!

https://www.concept2.com/files/pdf/us/miscellaneous/MISC_MSD...

The closest thing I could find to mentioning vegetable oil was this thread:

https://umgf.com/three-in-one-oil-substitute-t37605.html

But the claim is without a reference, and the MSDS certainly appears to be the latest word.

Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.

Without falling into an oil debate, no cycle mechanic I’ve ever spoken to uses or would recommend wd40 for chain oil. It’s far too thin and is primarily for freeing stuck parts and cleaning. It’s not meant for long term lubrication - it dries out or get washed off almost instantly.

3 in 1 is fine, but the main advantage of a proper chain lube is that they don’t attract grime and dirt as quickly

Waxing (also possible with bee wax) once you streamline the process (chain link, hot water for cleaning, cheap wax warmer the one women use and since the new chains (every 5000-10000km) are heavily pre-lubed you need 3 steps to remove the mineral oil: 1. soak in gasoline or alike for 1 day, 2. degrease and then 3. finish it off with white spirit) is imo the best for the chain.

Clean and smooth. I rewax every week (200km), takes me 10 min in total, also a a convenient way to inspect and adjust my whole drivetrain, regularly.

WD40 is primarily a mixture of mineral spirits and light mineral oil. The mineral spirits evaporate, the oil stays behind.

You can use WD40 to clean the chain, but you better put real lube on the chain afterwards.

WD-40’s longer name is “water displacement 40”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WD-40

Oil displaces water.

WD40 is a terrible choice of chain lubricant, it’s too volatile.

WD40 is a penetrant, not a lubricant, I don’t know any Mechanics who use it.

Definitely will debate lubricants for days, but no one who is in the industry uses standard WD40

WD40 is absolutely a lubricant. The WD40 is not a lubricant thing just needs to die already. Of course it’s not the best lubricant for every job. In fact it’s probably not the best lubricant for any job, but it’s a good enough lubricant for many jobs. It’s also a penetrant and water displacer. Versatile products usually aren’t the absolute best choice for a given use case, but that doesn’t make versatility bad.

From Wikipedia:

> WD-40 is an American brand and the trademark name of a water-displacing spray

… and the definition of “water displacing spray” is “penetrating fluid”

It definitely is an oil, it definitely lubricates. But we normally name things by their primary purpose.

PB B'laster is the gentleman's penetrant. I don't really have a use for WD40.

I think this is part of the love for the machine, and is a part of hacker culture I find endearing even if it's not necessarily rational. I'd put tweaking your Linux windowing system into the same category :)

The replies are clearly cyclists.

If you read the article it isn't just the thousands of gallons, it is also breathing petroleum aerosols, etc.

These foresters seem to have good experiences with it-

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=90186.0

Have any studies been done on breathing vegetable oil aerosols?

We'll probably get some solid observational data, due to the rise of vaping, but that will take a few years.

What about all of the fast food fry cooks?

Reminds me I used a drop on a ThinkPad x60 noisy CPU fan. It held long enough. Not that this anecdote means much.

If you use your chainsaw every day then vegetable oils are fine. The arborist I use uses vegetable oil and that was his comment to me.

I use mineral oil in mine as I use it ~twice a year

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