Car wax on lathe bed?

[John K Jordan]

I think I'll try that.

I have a tube of extremely finely powdered graphite with a felt applicator left over from when I rebuilt a player piano action decades ago. (the wooden slides, govenors, some felt, metal-to-wood pivots, and such are often lubricated with graphite - never oil, silicone, etc. Doesn't take much.) Never thought of using it on metal-to-metal contacts.

If not careful it will go everywhere. It does leave a nice, dark, glossy sheen - just now wondering how it would look rubbed on the surface of wood or texture highlights!

JKJ

OK, I tried the graphite today. My tube is, as mentioned, sold to piano technicians, comes with a felt applicator inside the long cap. I've been turning african blackwood lately and the banjo was getting hard to move, probably from the extremely fine dust. I had to lift the heavy back end of the banjo up a little when moving it around.

I blew off the dust then rubbed a tiny bit of graphite on the ways with the felt applicator. Instant effortless sliding, so easy to move now in to any position! I suspect the graphite fills in tiny scratches on the metal.

I applied it on July 4th so that should make it easy to keep up with how long the application lasts.

JKJ

 

[John K Jordan]

I get this. I tried lubing the spindle on a very nice Orvis fly reel with graphite, and it just locked it up until I cleaned it out.

One thing I wonder: could these mechanisms and locks already have some oil inside? If so, perhaps adding graphite could make a gummy mess. No such problems so far on things I've used graphite for.

JKJ

 

[Aaron Harris]

One thing I wonder: could these mechanisms and locks already have some oil inside? If so, perhaps adding graphite could make a gummy mess. No such problems so far on things I've used graphite for.

JKJ

John, I think that was exactly the problem on my fly-reel spindle. I could tell when I cleaned it out that it had gunked up with some lube that was already there.