-
Welcome back Guest! Did you know you can mentor other members here at H-M? If not, please check out our Relaunch of Hobby Machinist Mentoring Program!
I tried an old Lard Oil recipe for cutting steel....
- Thread starter HiltzVW
- Start date
-
- Tags
- cutting oil
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2021
- Messages
- 157
Today I tried an experiment. After reading about the virtues of bacon grease for metal work, I tried bacon grease today instead of Tap Magic for long 3/8"-16 threads I was cutting. Know that this is grease from aged bacon, not sugar cured, smoked, or salted. I couldn't believe the result.
The commercial cutting oil smoked and fumed and the chips often recycled and tore up a quarter thread. The rod being threaded is vertical and chucked in a powerful drill press. In 9 1/2" of threading hot rolled steel the threads were randomly torn up a bit and were generally rough. The force to hold the die stock was about all my hands could tolerate for the 2 minutes or so to traverse the 9 1/2". Die stock handles were about 5" long.
Then I applied bacon grease straight up. What a difference! It took about 1/3 the force to hold the die, the chips either fell out or curled in long strings, and the threads were as smooth as rolled threads. There was considerably less heat generated. I was open mouthed awe struck at the difference. Was it repeatable? Every time. And on left hand threads too. The RH threads were cut with a six flute 1" round adjustable die set at nominal and the LH threads were cut with a cheaper four flute die, also set at nominal. LH took just a bit more force and I attribute that to the number of flutes in the die.
So, there will be a small container of bacon fat in the shop refrigerator for such occasions.
DanK
The commercial cutting oil smoked and fumed and the chips often recycled and tore up a quarter thread. The rod being threaded is vertical and chucked in a powerful drill press. In 9 1/2" of threading hot rolled steel the threads were randomly torn up a bit and were generally rough. The force to hold the die stock was about all my hands could tolerate for the 2 minutes or so to traverse the 9 1/2". Die stock handles were about 5" long.
Then I applied bacon grease straight up. What a difference! It took about 1/3 the force to hold the die, the chips either fell out or curled in long strings, and the threads were as smooth as rolled threads. There was considerably less heat generated. I was open mouthed awe struck at the difference. Was it repeatable? Every time. And on left hand threads too. The RH threads were cut with a six flute 1" round adjustable die set at nominal and the LH threads were cut with a cheaper four flute die, also set at nominal. LH took just a bit more force and I attribute that to the number of flutes in the die.
So, there will be a small container of bacon fat in the shop refrigerator for such occasions.
DanK