Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait a moment. Mineral oils are food-safe? Don't they accumulate in the body and act as endocrine disruptors?
To my knowledge it can absorb a little through the skin but not through the intestines though more than a little will give you the shits real bad.
Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
61–70 of 138 posts
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#62Some 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.
> our own olive oil
How long have you been off grid (or did the olive trees pre-date you)?
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#63They refer to 'thousands of gallons of chain-and-bar oil... carried into the forests' every year Is this quantity significant?
No. You run maybe a pint of bar and chain oil through a big felling saw in an entire day of running it.
More transmission and hydraulic fluid leaks from logging equipment constantly.
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#64I have never known a professional logger to use these biodegradable oils.
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cyclists debate about oil for days. Cycle mechanics just use WD40.
WD40 is a penetrant, not a lubricant, I don’t know any Mechanics who use it. Definitely will debate lubricants for days, but no one who is in the industry uses standard WD40
WD40 is absolutely a lubricant. The WD40 is not a lubricant thing just needs to die already. Of course it’s not the best lubricant for every job. In fact it’s probably not the best lubricant for any job, but it’s a good enough lubricant for many jobs. It’s also a penetrant and water displacer. Versatile products usually aren’t the absolute best choice for a given use case, but that doesn’t make versatility bad.
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It occurs to me that large computer programs can also be diabolically complex and nonlinear. Changing a single byte of code can result in a huge change in process behavior.
I generally disdain the temptation to use computer analogies for natural processes too, but in this case your objection isn’t strong.
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or does it matter that the petroleum came from the forests, the deserts and some underseas equivalents? Petroleum is a natural thing. There are no doubt problems with the refined versions of petroleum but natural oils have issues too. The right solution might still be to ban petroleum oils from this job. But it seems foolish to pretend they are any less natural than vegetable oils.
It’s true that literally everything on Earth is natural by definition, either naturally-occurring or produced by natural forces like erosion or beavers or humans. But that’s tautological, and not interesting. Refined petroleum does not occur naturally and is toxic to all life. Vegetable oils are produced by stepping on or chewing nuts or vegetables. There is no comparison.
> Refined petroleum does not occur naturally and is toxic to all life.
Not all life[1].
[1] https://iscsales.com/item/55-gallon-oil-eating-microbes-lfs-...
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#68The article talks about "canola based oils". Has anyone used just plain canola oil to do the job?
Different varieties of rapeseed make different oils, but steam locomotives and piston aircraft used canola for lubrication.
It works just fine for general lubrication. Other things or canola oil not intended for human consumption may be better for different applications.
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#69Lubricating a chain is one of the least demanding tasks we have for oil. Unlike in the crankcase of an engine or in the pumps of a hydraulic system, there is very little pressure or temperature involved. Unlike e.g. bicycles, chainsaws have oilers that constantly feed additional liquid onto the chain, so the lubricant doesn't even have to adhere that well. (The best "oil" for a bike chain is actually wax since it adheres very well and is less dirty than oil.) In green wood, the main thing that the oil is doing is keeping water out of the chain.
Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)
#70The article talks about "canola based oils". Has anyone used just plain canola oil to do the job?
I used a chainsaw for several years, cut up some trees into cordwood, and used only plain canola oil the whole time. There were places on the saw that got a bit gummy, but functionally it worked fine.