Amazing what the Old Fellows discovered and put to practical use..

Does a bare wire work as a wick ???? I have my doubts.

Most full size steam engines use the same arrangement but the wire is wound with sheeps wool. The wool is what is used as the wicking material and the wire as a support and used to push the wick down the hole.

When oiling a steam engine, it is good practice to remove the wick each time and dip in the oil to ensure that it is completely wet and replace it in the oiler hole.

The wick works like a syphon hose to lift the oil over the top of the pipe in the oiler and drain it to bottom. If the wick is dry, it may not work. (a hose will not syphen water (or other) if you don't remove all of the air and place the discharge end at a lower level)

Synthetic wool does not have the capilliary properties of real wool.

Edited By Paul Lousick on 17/01/2022 21:49:37

They are also used on the Mikron F75 milling machine.

F75

Although I never found out how the vertical head is oiled.I think mine looked a bit different from the picture at Tony's.

Used grease iirc, but I did not know better back then 54 years ago.

Regards,
Hans

The main reason for using wicks is they deliver oil and leave the grit behind.

regards Martin

There's no point saying it doesn't work, it plainly does, what we need to know is how. Capillary rise doesn't need a tube.

A sensible & practical answer Paul! Referencing several of my 'old steam' books, have not come across any mention of plain wire oilers – always tend to the copperwire with pure lambswool twisted in.

I'm sure if plain wire worked properly it would have been used widely. However, it does seem that it was used in several types of machine etc as mentioned in earlier posts – so there's a bit of an enigma!

I've not had any practical experience of wire oilers, but from the OP's video it looks like it's a syphon action (or combination of capillary and syphon) caused by the narrow central tube. So to set things going, the reservoir would need to be 'over-filled' and then the drips would continue until the supply was exhausted. Possibly this is why Paul's experiment didn't show any results for the plain wire – there was no oils already in place to start the flow, nor the relatively narrow tube to keep the syphon effect going.

Rob

Edited By Grindstone Cowboy on 20/01/2022 10:00:14

Just managed to get in before SOD

Edited By Grindstone Cowboy on 20/01/2022 10:01:44

Do wire wicks entrain grit ?

regards Martin

Is it a strand of solid wire or a very small tube that siphons, started by capilliary action ? Worstead trimmings were used in locomotives, where by the capilliary action fed oil to a bearing surface from a resovoir. That it does not entrain grit is a very good point I had not thought of. Noel.

Pipe cleaners

I did a couple of other experiments to test some of the theories that were posted.

Lifting by capillary action and syphoning.

I suspect the syphon is broken because the two wire examples touch the container lip. It isn't broken in the multi-strand wicks because the outer threads are lifted over the edge. If so, the single wires might work if they were held by a firm base that hooked them clean over the lip.

Possibly the viscosity, weight and how well the oil sticks to the wire matter too. Could be a lighter oil on a different surface would be OK

My test does not use a tube on the inside of the oil pot and I don't believe it is a syphon action that lifts the oil. On some large engines the tube is 1/8"-1/4" diameter and 2"-3" high and open to air at the top. Somehow, the oil has to be raised by the wick on the outside of the tube

The test below has the wicks held at the base and hooked over the lip without touching the cup. The 1st is solid copper wire, the second plain steel with no coating on its surface and the 3rd is multi strand copper wire (from electrical cable).

Lighter (hydraulic) oil was used this time for the test and each wire coated with it to wet its surface.

Sfter 12 hours nothing happened.

In this test the first wick used a solid steel wire wrapped tightly with wool yarn..

We don't have worsted wool in Australia and I used a local lambs wool knitting yarn. ( Worsted is a high-quality type of wool yarn. It is named after the small English village of Worstead, in the county of Norfolk)

The second wick is one strand of the copper electrical wire, bent in half to make a small loop and twisted together. The wool passed thru the loop and roughly wound around the twisted copper wire. (this is how I make wicks for our full size traction engines)

Both of these transfered a similar amount of oil.