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Old 12-04-2019, 04:28 PM
Dave Dave is online now
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Loveland, CO
Posts: 5,909
As many have noted, there is never any evidence that pure paraffin works well as a lubricant. That's why I put heavy weight gear lube into my wax and naptha liquid lube. Today I did a little test to see how much oil in the paraffin was too much. I first took 2 ounces of paraffin and added 1 ounce of gear lube, then melted it down and mixed it well, before cooling it back down to hard wax. With that much oil in the paraffin, it scraped off the top of the hardened block, about the same as pure paraffin.

I then added another 1/2 ounce of gear lube and went through the same procedure. This time the paraffin was definitely soft and would probably leave more residue if it was mixed with naptha and then allowed to dry after applying it to a chain.

Unless my figures are off, I also figured that an ounce by weight of paraffin is about the same as a fluid ounce, so if you're mixing melted paraffin into naptha, both can be measured as a liquid.

With regard to how much solvent to mix with paraffin, it can be as low as 4 parts naptha to 1 part paraffin/oil mix, but the less solvent used, the warmer it must be before use. I suspect that some of the solvent has evaporated from my early batch of lube that's been sitting around in a water bottle for over a year.

With a 4/1 ratio, there is 4 ounces of naptha, and 1 ounce paraffin/oil that has .5 ounce of paraffin and .5 ounce of oil. That comes out to .5 ounce of oil in 5 ounces of lube, or 10%, which is a lot more than I have been reporting.
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