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Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

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Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#51

Post by AlotOfReading »

seoaeu wrote: post #42
sonofhans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By “significant” I take you to mean, “causing enough harm to be noticeable.” I don’t know the answer to that. Consider that chainsaws are only one of many polluting tools that people use in forests, e.g., snowmobiles, generators, of course cars. There are many non-petroleum pollutants as well, like lead ammunition and trash. I believe it’s a useful practice to reduce harm from each of these as much as possible. That…

A key piece of advice in performance optimization is to profile first. The same should apply to environmentalism. Some interventions have orders of magnitude more impact than others, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise

This is one of those times when programming analogies don't work. Ecosystems are diabolically complex and nonlinear. A small perturbation might be okay one year and collapse everything the next, depending on a thousand other factors. It's good to try, but it would be a terrible policy to mandate.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#52

Post by toxik »

HPsquared wrote: post #48
analog31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.

Isn't a certain degree of gumming-up advantageous? It would keep the oil in place after it works it's way into all the nooks and crannies, ending up more like a grease. This behaviour could be good for corrosion prevention.

You want your oil (and grease) in the bearing surfaces, not in nooks and crannies. Tackiness can indeed be good though.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#53

Post by newaccount74 »

buildsjets wrote: post #27
analog31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.

Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.

You can use WD40 to clean the chain, but you better put real lube on the chain afterwards.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#54

Post by buildsjets »

buildsjets wrote: post #27
analog31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.

Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.

The replies are clearly cyclists.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#55

Post by rsj_hn »

buildsjets wrote: post #27
analog31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.

Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.

I think this is part of the love for the machine, and is a part of hacker culture I find endearing even if it's not necessarily rational. I'd put tweaking your Linux windowing system into the same category :)

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#56

Post by madaxe_again »

nradov wrote: post #7

Some of my scuba diving friends go ice diving in Canadian lakes. They use chainsaws to cut access holes through the ice, and always lubricate those chainsaws with vegetable oil so as not to contaminate the water with petrochemicals.

I live way off grid, and we just use our own olive oil, on our electric chainsaws, powered by solar power. Apart from the actual hardware, it’s a neatly closed loop.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#57

Post by ahartmetz »

dehrmann wrote: post #23
sowbug wrote: post #12

My paper shredder's user manual recommends* periodically shredding a paper with oil drizzled on it for lubrication. It says vegetable oil is fine. *At least, it did until I shredded it.

This surprises me; vegetable oil gets sticky as it oxidizes. I would have expected something like mineral oil.

Some vegetable oil oxidizes much faster than some other. Sunflower oil oxidizes rather quickly, olive oil I haven't noticed oxidizing yet.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#58

Post by matthewmcg »

We have a pecan tree in our back yard. These are "self pruning" trees, meaning they occasionally drop heavy limbs. When a big one fell, a neighbor volunteered to slice it up with his chainsaw for us. He let us know he was using canola oil to lubricate the saw, as the wood was good for smoking.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#59

Post by analog31 »

buildsjets wrote: post #27
analog31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, gas engines probably drip or exhaust more oil. Certainly 2 stroke chainsaws. There's a rumor among cyclists that "3 in 1 oil" is bad for bikes because it contains vegetable oil that gums up. But cyclists will debate about oil for days.

Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.

WD40 is primarily a mixture of mineral spirits and light mineral oil. The mineral spirits evaporate, the oil stays behind.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#60

Post by electric_mayhem »

capekwasright wrote: post #21

Tangentially related: Boston Dynamics' BigDog, which utilizes hydraulic actuators, would constantly leak hydraulic fluid while operating, be it through normal weepage or catastrophic leaks (e.g. burst hoses). Initially, they used petroleum-based hydraulic fluid, but as they began to operate out in the woods etc, this proved to be untenable, so they eventually switched to using a vegetable-based hydraulic fluid that w…

Tangentially related, in the early 00’s in a datacenter belonging to a large multinational corporation, there was an IBM as/400 that frequently leaked puddles of yellow liquid.

A puddle was found under it; the puddle was cleaned up. The puddle came back. Repeatedly.

The data center management was perplexed. The internal as/400 professionals were stumped. IBM techs were called in. They assured the datacenter’s management that this couldn’t be coming from the hardware. The machines simply didn’t contain yellow fluid.

No leaks in the ceiling, no overhead pipes, it wasn’t coming from the chassis, no other hardware exhibited this weirdness. Food and drink had never been permitted inside. But it was coming from somewhere, because no matter how many times they cleaned it up, another puddle appeared.

When finally a camera was surreptitiously deployed to surveil the afflicted machine, it didn’t take long before the camera revealed one of the datacenter staff members was just walking up to it and urinating on it. No particular reason, just something he felt like doing.

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