What is the best, wait for it ... oil can?

Pete F · Jan 23, 2017

Yes while you guys are dealing with "alternative facts" we've got real problems down here in Oz. Oil Cans. Yes, that's right, the humble oil can! Can anyone tell me a decent brand of oil can that isn't a Chinese piece of crap and actually does what it's supposed to ie pumps instead of oozes, and manages to get oil INSIDE ball oilers and places I'd like it to go instead of spewing it from @$$&hole to breakfast time and leaving the workshop looking like something Red Adair would be afraid to come near!

[486] · Jan 23, 2017

I've got a goldenrod can that works good for me, the biggest one on the shelf, maybe 1qt? Came with a flex spout, but quickly ditched that dripping garbage for a piece of 3/16" steel brake line stuck in an NPT adapter (top of the can is 1/8" female NPT)

Supplies enough pressure to get oil into the ball oilers, and the tubing-cuttered end of the brake line seems to seal on them well enough.
Got a nice machined brass cap and bung that doesn't feel shitty like the pressed-sheetmetal threads on smaller cans.

ETA: this one, Dutton-Lainson Company - Since 1886 was $20 when I bought it.

ewlsey · Jan 23, 2017

I've tried a lot of oil cans and they all pretty much suck. Here in the US we have Goldenrod. They make a decent selection of oil cans.

I have mostly given up and I use plastic squeeze bottles with a nozzle and a cap. You can get them for just a few $ and when they get too beat up just toss them out.

Oldwrench · Jan 23, 2017

This really is the $64,000 question. We have successive waves of crap Chinese pump oil cans lying around here. The last good one I had was a Plews brand made around 1950. It never wore out; somebody took it. If anybody knows of a brand name and source for a good rigid-spout can for ball oilers PLEASE reveal it.

James H Clark · Jan 23, 2017

I think that Golden Rod is Chinese. I just cruise swap meets and flea markets in hope of finding old American made cans. Those , I can rebuild or repair. Someone on a forum made his own pump oilers, not sure which.

JH

Monarchist · Jan 23, 2017

Pete F said:
Yes while you guys are dealing with "alternative facts" we've got real problems down here in Oz. Oil Cans. Yes, that's right, the humble oil can! Can anyone tell me a decent brand of oil can that isn't a Chinese piece of crap and actually does what it's supposed to ie pumps instead of oozes, and manages to get oil INSIDE ball oilers and places I'd like it to go instead of spewing it from @$$&hole to breakfast time and leaving the workshop looking like something Red Adair would be afraid to come near!

No problem, Pete.

Salvage the hydraulics off a backhoe. They'll outlast your needs. Pick the right one, it will oil everything in range without human intervention.

More seriously, I have a 1960 vintage Fisher-Scientific chem lab 'wash bottle' in what faint memory sez was once cloudy'ish translucent linear polyethylene.

It is brown as a nut opaque now - but has not cracked, leaked, clogged, nor ever even once failed to deliver oil exactly where it was placed with but a modest squeeze to its still-flexible sides.

Hafta say it. On that 'flexible' score, I wish women wore as well.

Bill

Bill D · Jan 23, 2017

Like these unitary bottles?
Warning that store is danegerous. I went in with my wife to buy three bottles. Came out $120 lighter with boots and coats for my wife and myself.
Bill D.

https://www.enasco.com/c/science/Lab+Supplies/Bottles/?ref=breadcrumb

dgfoster · Jan 23, 2017

I have a 1 pint Goldenrod from the ?1940's? given to me by friends who knew I'd appreciate it.

That is a real nice piece of work inside and out. Castings for the pump body, solid steel piston, and nice heavy rolled steel body and stamped end caps from heavy gage steel and nice machined-from-solid knurled steel bung. No crappy tinny parts on it anywhere. The thing "drips" quality and pumps with authority. Mine is the twin of this one: Vintage Golden Rod 1 Pint Oil Can Hastings Nebraska ...look | What's it worth

I cleaned the crud off mine but did not shine it up---much more authentic if not too pretty. I use it almost daily to oil my mill spindle and tailstock. I smile every time I pick it up.

Denis

readymix · Jan 23, 2017

Check out Reilang. They are expensive, but they work better than anything else I've tried.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

Monarchist · Jan 23, 2017

Bill D said:
Like these unitary bottles?
Warning that store is danegerous. I went in with my wife to buy three bottles. Came out $120 lighter with boots and coats for my wife and myself.
Bill D.

https://www.enasco.com/c/science/Lab+Supplies/Bottles/?ref=breadcrumb

Same use. 'Nalgene' may even be the same material.

Look for an oval shape, though.

Easier to control the pointing and squeezing, easier to handle with oily hands.

The material is much thicker than dime-store or kitchenware stuff, and "may" be thicker than these ones as well. I have some that look exactly like these for other use, and they ARE much thinner.
OTOH, they don't HAVE to last fifty years plus. Only sheer chance I hadn't lost this one like so many others.

Adwcali · Jan 23, 2017

I just buy mine at antique stores and estate sales. I have a brand new goldenrod that has never pumped a drop of oil, piece of crap fell apart on the first try.

SIP6A · Jan 23, 2017

Start going to estate sales and start buying 70 year old. Eagle oil cans it will take about six months to get what you need. Any can made now is crap

Monarchist · Jan 23, 2017

SIP6A said:
Start going to estate sales and start buying 70 year old. Eagle oil cans it will take about six months to get what you need. Any can made now is crap

Cobbler's children going barefoot thing.

Funny part is near any man here can MAKE a damned good one that'd last a hundred years -TWO hundred if there were any braggin' rights to it.

But we don't DO that sort of stuff.

Rather suffer with store-bought junque than be branded a damned 'hobbyist'.

Pete F · Jan 24, 2017

ewlsey said:
Here in the US we have Goldenrod.

Goldenrod! Cripes man, is that a brand or are you just boasting?

I guess the equivalent down here would be Rega. They used to be good, but the trouble is they're now considered a "collectable". I take it that really means they're bought by a bunch of tossers in long socks with sandals, so they can be bent over by an antique dealer before wandering back to show their unimpressed wife, thereafter throwing it a cardboard box along with all the rest of their "collectables", where it remains until they fall off their perch and their kids take "Dad's crap" down to the tip to become landfill. For 75 bucks I'd expect a solid night with a cheap hooker and an annoying itch only modern science could take care of, not a freaking oil can! Vintage REGA 1Pint Pump VINTAGE OIL CAN Old Antique Dripper Garage Hand Tool #44 | eBay

My life was forever changed with the discovery of Wanner oilers and the revelation that zerk fittings weren't a method to permanently close oil galleries, and I was hoping the Swiss had come up with something else beside funky cheese and really ugly women. Nice cheese however, the chicks ... not so much. Ah yes Reilang, that's the one I remember. Thanks! I'll see of I can find some at a price that doesn't involve a tectonic shift in Australia's GDP just to receive a refusal to quote.

jCandlish · Jan 24, 2017

reilang™

from amazon ==> Reilang oil can 3ml double pump aluminium body: Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools

Cheaper from the manufacturer ==> Reilang oilers

dian · Jan 24, 2017

yes, if i walk down the street its like on a funeral, chicks all dressed in black and gray.

Pete F · Jan 24, 2017

Thanks guys. I have 300 ml worth of double pumping Swiss precision heading my way now*. It made the Rega "collectable" look like a bargain, but if I closed my eyes and thought of England it was over before I knew my name was now Jack Fisher. I've never owned a Reilang, but have always understood they're the duck's guts when it comes to oil squirters, and since he'll be doing his load inside mainly Swiss mechanics it's probably only right that we don't cross pollinate the bloodline. I shall take great delight in introducing the wonders of Chinese manufacturing to Mr Hammer when the Swiss competition shows up to the party.

*No, the double pumping action doesn't refer to a mountainous Fraulein by the name of Helga!

jCandlish · Jan 24, 2017

I'd also note ...

http://www.hausammann.com/de/stossdruckpresse-fuer-oel-ch-fabrikat-fuer-oel-ode-4000~10295.html

Pete F · Jan 24, 2017

Yeah thanks, but I already have some of them. They helped restore my sanity right at the point where I was going to be the first person to launch a modified grease gun into low earth orbit!

Jim Williams · Jan 24, 2017

The oil can at my lathe is a golden color, about one pint capacity, with a solid spout. It has no name on it, so it must be a Chinese knock off. I think I purchased it at a NAPA auto parts store about 40 years ago. It has functioned well over the years except that it requires a number of pumps to get it going when it sits idle for a day or more. I have some poly dispensing bottles of one pint capacity that I use a lot. I have thought about trying one of the Swiss ones.

Jim

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