Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

fs.fed.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 138 posts

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#121

Post by berkes »

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

An unfortunate effect of that measure is that it offers an excuse to 'do nothing'.

Both in programming and in environmentalism.

'The big issue lies not with X, but with Y, but Y is not my area/too big for now/etc. So I'll do nothing'

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#122

Post by Scoundreller »

1MachineElf wrote: post #49
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.

The last time in needed to lubricate my paper shredder, I used sewing machine oil on it.

5w30 here…

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#123

Post by exDM69 »

dehrmann wrote: post #25
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.

Same with guitar players and fingerboard oils. Use mineral oil because it's food-safe and won't go rancid. Same reason I use it on my cutting board.

Mineral oil is fine for a fingerboard, but there is a caveat. Being a non-drying oil, it won't dry and nothing will stick to it. So if you put mineral oil once, it is mineral oil forever. If you try to put linseed oil or tung oil on it later, it will not adhere.

I use boiled linseed oil and beeswax on the fingerboards of guitars I've built. Linseed oil is a drying oil which will polymerize when it reacts with air instead of going rancid like food oils.

Drying oils or mineral oil should both work for the job as long as you do not try to mix them.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#124

Post by thrower123 »

nkurz wrote: post #98
thrower123 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You run maybe a pint of bar and chain oil through a big felling saw in an entire day of running it. Without getting into whether it's actually a significant pollutant compared to other sources, I think your estimate is considerably low. I'm usually worn out before I can cut for a whole day, but I've gone through more than 2 quarts in a day. And here's someone professional who says he goes through a gallon a day of…

I'd say your oiler needs adjusting.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#125

Post by vixen99 »

eutectic wrote: post #102
BoorishBears wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piss smells like urea, and urea has industrial uses. If you have 0 ideas about what it is, and piss seems improbable, I could see the confusion

Urea doesn't smell like anything much. Leave it long enough and it breaks down to make ammonia, which does.

Most people can't taste it at all. And let's celebrate its 'invention' by the mammals so many million years ago as a brilliant solution to the problem of how to temporarily store and then excrete nitrogen in a harmless way as against the uric acid route used by birds and reptiles. People who have a test for the nasty H. pylori bug swallow a solution of urea and find it tasteless as far as I'm aware.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#126

Post by aaron695 »

For those who are not mentally ill and trusting what their chiropractor has told them about synthetic oils, why do we care?

Plants grow around literal tar pits..... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nature-s-time-capsules...

La Brea Pitch Lake on Google Maps - https://goo.gl/maps/MzuTgrGovebsWfxSA

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#127

Post by sethammons »

ralusek wrote: post #14
herendin2 wrote: post #2

They refer to 'thousands of gallons of chain-and-bar oil... carried into the forests' every year Is this quantity significant?

Being pedantic, any quantity >= 2000 would be "thousands", so...maybe?

Reminds me that I like the phrase "only a fraction of $x does $y." People seem to ignore 9/10 and 200/1 are fractions.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#128

Post by j_d_b »

I recently topped off a chainsaw with motor oil and noticed that it flung everywhere. Chainsaw oil has some additives in it that allow the oil to be picked up by the chain at high speed but not flung off the chain. I wonder how this question would be addressed using vegetable oil.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#129

Post by hedora »

gorgoiler wrote: post #109
worik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quarter inch? That seems a lot. Cast iron pans?

Yup. Enough to flow over the base of the cast iron pan without any gaps. When you heat the pan you can see the water bubble out of the iron pores. I let it cool, wipe it out, and hang it up.

I just use a few drops of canola oil, wipe it down, then heat it up enough for any water to start evaporating. By the time it cools, it’s dry. Unless I’m missing something, this uses ~ 1000x less oil. It also avoids build up of oil.

I’d expect your cast iron to become sticky / blistered over time, though I haven’t tried the oil you use.

Re: Vegetable Oil for Lubricating Chainsaws (2008)

#130

Post by seoaeu »

kyralis wrote: post #80
seoaeu wrote: post #42

Earlier 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

I repeat that wisdom about performance optimization more frequently than my coworkers probably like, but it can still be taken too far. If you have two approaches that are equally clear and equally easy, take the one that you expect to be more performant. In this case, we have two lubricants that are apparently interchangeable. One we know has potential downsides (petroleum based oils are known to be harmful to the g…

Even in that situation it is still worth asking what order of magnitude the performance difference will be. If a junior engineer codes up the slower one, should they rewrite it or is it not worth the time?

I just don’t understand why environmentalists sometimes get so indignant when asked about the effect size of the interventions they call for. There’s a million low effort lifestyle chances that would be better for the environment, it is a totally fair question to ask if we want to maximize impact

Post reply on HN