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Cheap tapping oil/grease (engine oil, bearing grease)?

bikemaniac

Plastic
Joined
Dec 5, 2012
Location
Denmark
Hi,

Question: When hand tapping on a hobbyist level, is it really necessary to buy those advanced and expensive tapping oils/grease? What would happen if you would use normal engine oil, bearing grease, linseed oil etc? Most people have this stuff around. Any experience?

Lucas
 
Engine oil and grease are not tapping lubricants. One of the best that is readily available for the home user is bacon grease or lard.

Ed
 
At least go to "Home Dupe-you" and get a small bottle of pipe threading oil.... it's cheap, made for the purpose,works, and easily obtained.
 
Of all the things a hobbiest uses, tapping and drilling lube must be about the least money spent. I use a tapping lube called Re-Li-on its $10-15, its a 4 oz sqeeze bottle, last 2-3 years, since all you need is a few drops each time. For milling and Drilling I use CRC Tapping lube, its a spray foam, sticky and since it has a long nozzle tube can be shot down a deep hole, vertical surface etc. and it can be applied just where I want it, those last 3 months depending on the project. I spend more money of Coffee than on all the lube oil in the shop. The right stuff for the job is the cheapest.
 
Atex got it in one. Bacon grease is among the very best all purpose taping and form tiool goop there is for most any anything. Plain lard is good but bacon and ham grease is much better for some reason.

That said it's unsanitary. It attracts rats and roaches and it can spoil if neglected. OTH using it makes you hungry for breakfast, BLT's, burger surpremes.

Other good stuff to have on the shelf with the taps is WD40 (GREAT for aluminum,) black nasty pipe threading oil (for soft gummy steels,) Tap Magic (almost universal application but a little pricy they way I slobber it on) Cut wax, cold creme, hand lotion, bees wax, almost anything that's geasy or oily and has a lits of ingredients.

We had a neglected Bullaqrd whose sump was never pum,ped. The coolant was like Grey Poupon mustard but smell like an old refrigerator. It was toxic waste. Besides soluable oil there was years of cutting oil and tramp oil, coffee, spilled soft drinks, snoose spit, sandwich srusts, butts, rat poop, dead bugs, you name it it had gone into the coolant to ferment and blend. That was the best taqpping goop I ever used. I even used it to form tool big radii on mild steel and so long as that nasty stuff wet the work before it went under the tool the ships crinkled up like foil. If you left a dry spot you have a definate drag and the next rev if dry would turn into a long ugly tear.
 
i had some morse cutting fluid,it was like honey,took a drop on the tip of a bit to turn drilling into a whole new ball game.there are charts for drilling /tapping different metals and the type of lube required.

i'm unable to get the morse product any more,aparrently its no longer available in canada.

its worth the few dollars to buy what you need to suit the task at hand,both in tool life and stress levels when you break a tap due to wrong lube.
 
Do NOT use lubricants like motor oil, or grease. Do not use any
hydraulic fluid.

For tapping aluminum kerosene works well. Available in handy
spray cans labled 'wd40.'

For steel or stainless steels, the abovementioned bacon grease
is outstanding. My preferred tapping fluid is a 50/50 mix of
kerosene and purified lard oil.
 
Break one hardened tap off in a hole on a project or in one of your wifes favorite appliances, your car, Harley, or your childs toy, your trying to repair, and you'll wish you had spent a few $ for some proper cutting/tapping fluid. Cheap insurance for a succesful job IMO. As anyone, hobbist level or professional knows, the proper tools are what make a job a success or a nightmare. I put a good quality tapping fluid in that list................JMO..............Rick
 
Canola Oil
Works
I use a blend of Canola and straight mineral oil.
Please dont tell me it doesnt work......because it does.....and it is close to what some old books recommend in case lard is considered too expensive or messy...
 
I have used darn near anything for drilling & tapping when there was nothing else available, all the way from a drop from my car's dipstick to pouring some Coca Cola on the tap. Trust me---nothing works as well as the products that are made for lubing drills and taps. Buy some Rigid dark cutting oil in a small can, buy some WD-40, and for less than $ 10, you can get by pretty well. Remember - the low cost of cutting oil is more than offset by the cost of drills and taps...
 
"Break one hardened tap off in a hole on a project or in one of your wifes favorite appliances, your car, Harley, or your childs toy, your trying to repair, and you'll wish you had spent a few $ for some proper cutting/tapping fluid."

And/or wish you had bought a good quality US made tap instead of one of those awful cheap chinese ones. Taps and drills are two things (like tires) that you definitely get what you pay for.
 
Canola Oil
Works
I use a blend of Canola and straight mineral oil.
Please dont tell me it doesnt work......because it does.....and it is close to what some old books recommend in case lard is considered too expensive or messy...
Now that seems interesting. And it is not smelly at all.

I do have access to the dark Ridgid paste and I hate it because of the smell. I prefer the smell of lard over the dark Ridgid paste :-)

Lucas
 
A good quality tapping fluid is best but pretty much anything is better than nothing at all. Even water is better than nothing.

Brian
 
Lucas --

For occasional use with normal materials, greases and oils from animal or vegetable sources are generally much more satisfactory cutting / tapping lubes than petroleum oils, and are sold at most grocery stores and butchers. Over the last forty years, I've used beef and sheep tallow, pork lard, and a number of different vegetable oils quite happily, but have settled on Crisco-brand vegetable-based shortening as my de-facto standard. (I have found that for the really tough tapping jobs, the addition of powdered graphite to the fat improves its performance well enough to be worth the exceptional mess of the graphite.)

One note of caution: Animal and vegetable oils can turn rancid and/or oxidize to a gummy varnish, especially if they've been heated. Wipe your tools, machines, and workpiece clean after using animal or vegetable oils to avoid the problem.

John
 
I used Rocol RTD in a hobby environment - it is a smelly grease which smells something like dog poo, a tin will last for years and is cheaper than torn threads and new taps/dies.
This is a UK product which may be easier for you to obtain than some thing the US guys may suggest. If you use it clean it off after as it seems to cause staining of metals.

Steve
 
Paraffinic oils (e.g. hydrocarbon lubricating oils) are fairly stable molecules, even under harsh conditions, and work by separating the sliding lumps of metal. Cutting oils have molecules that break up to form molecules with chemically active ends under the same high-pressure high-shear conditions. These, now active, molecules bind directly onto the newly exposed metal from the cutting operation and then serve to lubricate it. So the cutting oil works very well as a lubricant to metal that's been torn apart rather than serving to keep the tool and the metal separate.

Light cutting oils are often modified with chlorine compounds. These form the active components under cutting conditions. A lot of heavier cutting oils including tapping oils, that are used in slow speed high load cutting, are modified with sulphur (sulfer) compounds.

Organic oils, such as lard oil, tallow and rapeseed (canola) oil contain fatty acids that already have a chemically active end to their molecules, so perform a similar function.

It's worth getting half a litre of tapping oil, it will last you many years of hobby use (my current bottle has lasted 8 years, but will need replacing next year). You should be able to get half a litre locally or from Germany for about €10-15.

If you have a lathe, you might use more cutting oil, but the lighter Chlorine based oils often work better in this use.

I hope some of that is useful information

Regards
Mark Rand
 








 
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