[HAM] WD 40 & Hammond oil

[David Anderson]

What's in a name?

Although the manufacturers don't state precisely what it is, the main  
ingredient of WD-40 *is* kerosene or something in the same  
petrochemical family. I think we tend to get confused by all the  
different names: "Stoddard's Solvent," "Mineral Spirits," "Varsol,"  
"White Gasoline," "Kerosene," "Naphtha," "Petrol," etc... They may  
differ in how refined they are, but for the purposes we are talking  
about, as something to remove gummed up oil, there's not too much  
difference.

DeOxit D5, for example, is largely Naphtha used as a delivery solvent  
for the contact cleaner it contains, but I've heard people who use  
DeOxit all the time express concern over whether or not naphtha would  
be harmful to electronic components, not aware that they, themselves,  
are using it all the time.

If kerosene had a tendency to harm cotton threads, I imagine there  
would be a lot of kerosene lanterns that wouldn't work ;-)

I think what those of us who are suspicious of WD-40 are saying is:  
it does contain something that's not necessary for the job and which  
*may* cause problems down the line. I'm sure all the people who  
happily mixed lead into lead paint years ago had no idea what  
headaches it was going to cause for the next generation.

Manufacturers tend to be secretive about their products, but the way  
around this is often to do a web search for the Materials Safety Data  
Sheet (MSDS) which they are usually required to publish whether they  
want to or not.

David A.

On Apr 21, 2007, at 4:34 PM, Doug Irvine wrote:

> I removed the
> deadening material from under the TG, placed a load of newspaper on  
> the
> shelf, and started throwing kerosene  at it!  I did this for two  
> weeks,
> every day or so, until I could get it to turn over by hand. Then I  
> used
> WD 40 to further clean the # 10 out of there, and let that sit for
> another few days.

> I also have no idea what kerosene would do to those
> bearings and capillary threads, although I expect the threads would  
> not
> be affected.