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What grease for old style Snap On tool chest steel runners?

B

bll230

Hot Rolled
Joined
Jun 14, 2007
Location
Las Vegas
Wondering what other folks use to lube the old style steel runners on the pre-ball bearing Snap On tool chests? Grease? Oil? ??

John
 
I do a good cleaning, and follow it up with a good dry type silicone spray on mine. anything greasy will just collect dirt, where the dry silicone will let you blow it out and spray another coat periodically. The FOG where I worked years ago used graphite spray, and it worked until it built up, at which point it too would collect dirt and become lapping compound...
 
I guess I'm the devils advocate here...seems to me any old grease would work. Go to AutoZone, get some 'grease', lube the slides up and carry on. They're old and have lasted this long, so no big deal. Sort of like asking which mustard is best or which soy sauce is best...it's grease..it slides!

Stuart
 
Seems to me that drawer slides, especially ones on tool chests where the contents can be heavy, are under high pressure so a high pressure oil would be the logical choice.

I say oil instead of grease because oil will flow back onto the mating surfaces after it is squeezed out. There is no mechanism in a drawer slide to move grease back so it will stay out after being forced out.

I am not sure about that gumming up and becoming a lapping compound or if dry silicone will let you blow it out. Please tell me more about that.

I am interested in this topic because I have an older bench with plain steel-on-steel slides on the drawers instead of BB ones. It is Sears, not Snap On. Some of the drawers have a lot in them so the high pressure thing seems to be valid. I have had this bench for over 30 years and have not seen excessive wear due to lapping. I lubricated it about a year ago using different oils and greases on different drawers. I need to look carefully at it to evaluate that experiment - if I can find the list of the various lubricants that I used.
 
I mix up a little moly grease and oil. Seems to work pretty good. It's thin enough to still be a bit runny, but can be applied with an acid brush.
 
atomarc said:
I guess I'm the devils advocate here...seems to me any old grease would work. Go to AutoZone, get some 'grease', lube the slides up and carry on. They're old and have lasted this long, so no big deal. Sort of like asking which mustard is best or which soy sauce is best...it's grease..it slides!

Stuart
Click to expand...

X 2 on that, as I was once told when asking which oil? .......... ''wet and slippery's always a good start''
 
I have had quite a few instances where I can't decide to use grease or oil. I want it to flow, but be thick enough to hang around. I used to work on a piece of lab equipment that had roller cams in it and the manufacturer suggested and shipped a mix of 50% STP and 50% 90 W gear oil. Over the years I accumulated quite a few squeeze bottles full of the stuff because they shipped enough to last 500 years or so. It really works well for those times when grease is too heavy but plain oil is too light.
 
Wurth's HHS-K or HHS-2000.

HHS-K hinge lubricant aerosol can 500 mL | Specialty Lubricants | Lubricants | Chemical Product | Wurth USA

It's called a "hinge" lube, but that ain't the half of what it is useful for.

Sprays in - with a "wand" if need be. The volatile evaps. It leaves a slick EP lube behind that actually LASTS. Not messy like Moly, and won't mess-up future attempts to PAINT sumthin' adjacent ...as the "Silicone" lubes do, either.

Works a treat, but isn't cheap. Fortunately a VERY little goes a long way, even on underbody auto suspensions & c. exposed to splash, salts, and shiddy weather in general.
 
I agree Bill. I think anything you can get your hands on that is considered grease would work fine. Of course you could machine some miniature bearing buddies with stainless zerk fittings and grease the shit out of it at the beginning of each shift.
 
The fact that it's a Snap-On means that you really need to call your rep and buy the correct grease. I'll bet they have some for under $200 per tube.
 
Actually, if you look at the older Snap On tool box care and cleaning documentation, they recommend rubbing on paraffin wax as lubrication. You need to clean off all old lube first. A toothbrush, q-tips, and kerosine work well for that. I have restored a lot of old tool boxes and have found paraffin works very well. Being not sticky like grease, it does not collect dirt and lint. Others recommend bees wax, but I find it has higher initial stiction and dries out eventually.
 
DrHook said:
I do a good cleaning, and follow it up with a good dry type silicone spray on mine. anything greasy will just collect dirt, where the dry silicone will let you blow it out and spray another coat periodically. The FOG where I worked years ago used graphite spray, and it worked until it built up, at which point it too would collect dirt and become lapping compound...
Click to expand...

What's a "FOG"?
 
Personally, I use whatever thick grease I have near by. I think I did all the slides on my old Craftsman box with Moly grease. Pretty sure the slides on my Snap-On have a heavy grease on them, too. They work fine, even with all the weight.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk
 
I used to have one of those old WW2-era Steelcase office desks. The build quality was very good: There was a bit of brass sheet folded over the stationary runners (which were mild steel), so the sliding surfaces were steel against brass.

The drawers would eventually become difficult to move. The remedy was to take the drawers out, clean the sliding surfaces with a solvent-soaked rag, and re-grease. The wear products seemed to be mostly powdered metal, versus dust. The location was fairly well shielded from external dust.

I used Mobil 2 synthetic grease (which I use for everything). Generic white (lithium) grease dried out too soon.

This generally lasted five years. Don't know if paraffin would have lasted longer.
 
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