NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Lubricants [was] Soviet Sextants!
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Jul 30, 18:53 -0400
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Jul 30, 18:53 -0400
Vaseline is convenient and cheap. But it migrates in heat and doesn't last well. NeverSeize is a wonderful anti-galvanic compound. But it is metal dust in an oil base, and you find silver fingerprints all over after you contact it. It is not meant to be a lubricant, or used on moving parts. There are many products designed to lubricate and prevent galvanic corrossion, lanocote (lanolin based) and TefGel (teflon based gel) among the most popular and used to many things on boats. Personally I like DuPont Krytox, an exotic lubricant with a matching price. It is totally inert, it does not migrate, it ignores temperature shifts, it does not stain because it is white/clear. The drawback is that is it expensive, perhaps $10 for a 3/4oz. tube as grease or oil. Used sparingly it is still cheap in the long run. It is also available "diluted" in white parrafin wax, making it less expensive to use. The parrafin eventually wears or wipes off, taking the Krytox with it. "Sailcote" aerosol, sold to lubricate sail tracks, etc. as a can in the boating stores is one way to buy this. Bicycle shops sell a similar product as a chain lubricant, apparently because it does not trap dirt and debris the way a grease or oil would. A Krytox grease is also sold to lubricate spark plug boots by auto manufacturers, to prevent galling under conditions of high heat and dissimilar metals "forever". Pure Krytox is harder to find, you'd need to do a web search. But very impressive stuff when you need a DURABLE lubricant that does not degrade. A little bit goes a long way. I'd expect that even a conventional car wax or other good polish (i.e. a non-ammonia brass polish) would be good on the screw, if it was regularly cleaned and re-applied. The advantage being that is really cheap--and again, it won't migrate or trap dirt, the way a grease would.