Anti-Seize

I use Anti-Seize on a regular basis.  Yesterday I assembled some pieces which will the the spacer in my bolted dies.  Each piece has two 7/16” hex bolts and nuts.  I lubricated each bolt tread section as I assembled them and put them away for storage.

It is a little messy for me to use even though it has a handy brush attached to the screw top.  The silver color gets on my fingers and is transferred to gloves and other things before I get the residue wiped off.  It especially annoying when I get on the lenses of my glasses.

I like the fact that I can see it and tell that the item has been lubricated.  In that respect it is like the lawn care services which put green coloring in their spray mixtures so they can show they got proper coverage.

The lubricating effect seems to be quite long lasting and it holds up well even when exposed to weathering.  It is compounded mostly from aluminum, copper, graphite, calcium oxide and mineral oil.  I’ve had a couple of jars so long they got a bit dried out so I restored them by adding either mineral oil or Naphtha.

http://www.permatex.com/products-2/product-categories/lubricants/specialty-lubricants-anti-seize/permatex-anti-seize-lubricant-detail

Coal Dust Punch Lubricant

This week I made some forming dies with the hydraulic forging press. The depressions were sunk in several heats with progressively larger top tool positive forms. Slight upsetting and entrapment of the pushing form is always a possibility and a problem if it occurs. I thought about how I sometimes use a pinch of coal dust in the hole when hot punching to prevent the punch from sticking and how sometimes dipping the punch in grease or Anti-seize also helps.

When I first was setting up the shop I needed a 55 gallon drum to build a small tumbler. I went to a local bakery, which gave me the drum, but it still had about 5 gallons of grease inside. They said it was edible grease - Linoleic acid - and was really high quality. I scraped it all out and filled a 5 gallon drum and filled several more clear plastic jars with it and have used it ever since for general lubrication.

I mixed some of the grease with some sifted coal dust about 50/50 and filled two small cans. It seemed to entirely prevent sticking as I worked with the press so I’ll continue using it. Apparently the escaping gases from the combusting grease prevent the punch from binding.

I looked up linoleic acid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid and found it is a colorless liquid at room temperature and what I scraped from the drum was a pale green soft solid so it must be mixed with something else. Any cooking grease or canola oil probably would work too. Use good ventilation. I have no idea what is in the fumes.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/