Lard Oil or it’s modern day equvalent?

[Neil GreenawayParticipant @neilgreenaway71611]

Was Houghtolard a product from http://www.houghtonglobal.com/? I worked in a company who used houghton products extensively for metal cutting.

Neil

[Rich2502Participant @rich2502]

Posted by Mike on 28/12/2011 11:21:15:

I know of one gun workshop which uses ordinary lard (from the supermarket) as a lubricant when reaming the chokes in shotgun barrels. It gives a very fine finish.

i was a gunsmith apprentice in the 80's and in our Dickensian factory we used Lard oil, and Neatsfoot oil, for lapping shotgun barrels, i think it was for horses hooves ! We hardened and tempered some stuff in it too.

[Chris GunnParticipant @chrisgunn36534]

I know it is a little off topic, but the mention of whale oil reminded me that the company I used to work for, way back, designed and built machines for scraping the last scrap of whale oil out of the wooden barrels it was shipped in. When we had a clear out in the drawing office, I kept the general arrangement drawing of this machine, beautifully drawn in ink on silk. I thought it might come in handy one day.

Chris Gunn

[mgnbukParticipant @mgnbuk]

I think it was Sparey who recommended whale oil.

Apparently it's a very good lubricant.

Some years ago I commissioned a CNC convereted Keller horizontal milling machine. The Keller originally used an electrical copying system – feed to the axes via electric motors and clutches, controlled by a fancy switch arrangement at the stylus. I have seen pictures of these machine producing aircraft propeller blades during the last war.

The machine had been converted to a CNC gun drill, with the original spindle axis being replaced with a Mollart gun drilling slide assembly on a rotatable mounting. The Keller specified slideway lubricant was Sperm whale oil – apparently nothing else would do, as the sperm whale oil gave very little stiction & produced a much better surface finish. At the time (probably early '90s) the originally specified oil was stil available from Mobil, though I seem to recall that it was very expensive.

The machine was supplied to an automotive toolmaker on the south coast, used to put cooling & plastic injection channels into large injection mould tools (i.e. car bumper mouldings). I particularly remember this machine due to the failure of a part of the coolant system during initial drilling trials – the gun drill used high pressure coolant & the MTB had replaced the original coolant hoses with high pressure items. But he had retained a swivelling cast iron block mounted on the machine column, used to allow for the movement of the head up & down the column.. I was stood in front of the machine during the first cut when the casting burst – covering me from head to foot in neat cutting oil.

Nigel B.

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