Machine Oil and Rag clean up

At most hardware and big box stores, you can find the 3-in-One brand of SAE 20 oil in the blue and white, 3oz. bottle. It say SAE 20 on the label. Also, Grainger.com sells various brands of SAE 20 by the quart and gallon.

Paul Moxon
http://vandercookpress.info/vanderblog/

I use kerosene for wash up and oil pan cleaning, save them up and start the fireplace with them!

The thing that I don’t like about 3-in-1 is the citronella; it’s what gives it its distinct odour. I want my old machines to smell like old machines, not mosquito repellant.

Go to your local Canadian Tire, or equivalent, and ask for ISO 68 anti-wear hydraulic fluid. I can get a gallon for around $15, which is much cheaper than stinky 3-in-1, and it doesn’t smell one bit. The viscosity of ISO 68 fluid is the same as SAE 20 weight oil. Don’t let the ‘fluid’ word mislead you, it’s just oil.

mbumstead

There was a thread on 20 weight oil for Vandercooks not all that long ago. You might check the archives for further information.

Where are you getting California Wash in Los Angeles? It has been banned for sale in Los Angeles county and several others for well over a half-dozen years now. If you are buying it out of state you could still find yourself in trouble. The EPA was in my shop about a month ago. They photographed (and mechanically smelled) every frickin solvent container in the shop (even the cats!!!, for fun). Fortunately, I was clean (though the detectors went off when they smelled my wastebasket in the platemaking room—earlier in the day, I had been using some alcohol and acetone to clean adhesive off some film negs). They actually weren’t there to inspect; they want to install a detector for an ancient chemical spill in the area and needed to compare results per studio. Still, a fairly lengthy and nerve racking ordeal.

The environment is far better off if you toss the rags rather than launder them and put all that crap (plus cleanser) into the sewer system. Because of that, California state law allows you to throw them into the trash as long as they are completely dry.

Gerald
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com

to all

rags soaked in oil/various solvents means combustion; take care

Alan.

to all

spontaneous combustion happens when rags are damp with combustible liquids. It even happens with water-damp hay. I have seen heating happen with a pile of moist green grass clippings.

Alan.

Alan - the hay.grass clippings combustion has NOTHING to do with the fact that they are “water-damp”. The heat that causes that combustion is created by the physical decomposition of the organic material.

Reporting directly from the farm……

Rick

to Foolproof

I do not understand why damp clippngs of grass become hot when piled in heap, while dry clippings do not. I was just trying to make the case for avoiding spontaneous combustion. Respect the principle.

Alan.

I have posted before that I have found 20w vintage car engine oil.

dampness helps to seal in the gases of decomposition making spontaneous combustion possible. Ex city and rural firefighter

I use shop wipers that are cleaned by a service that must meet environmental standards. The used ones go to the floor on the oil pans to keep on soaking up oil till the time comes to send them in for exchange.

In damp hay the heat is indeed created by a combination of a bacteria and decomposition , in grass or other natural stuff its predictable and can almost be timed to occur. However with chemicals it is not predictable and oily rags are much less likely to ignite than grass or hay because the bacteria is not present and therefore the heating process takes a lot longer, rags that are wet with water are much more likely to ignite quicker than those with spirit in them as the bacteria grows quicker in water wetted material than with spirit wetted ones .
Laundrys have a particular problem with this ,especially the dryers with the lint drawers in them that unless cleared every day will almost certainly burn once the bacteria reach a certain concentration ,this is accelerated in dryers by the heating of the lint by the machnes heaters .
As foolproof mentions it farms have a particular problem with this from any baled material as the insides of a bale can heat up imperceptably , the process is aided by the bale having been formed in warm weather whilst too much water is present and then stood in the field in the sun warming it ,this advances the growth of bacteria and when ricked up or stacked the whole stack will begin to heat from within , my grandad had a long probe they used to push into the stacks ,if they were heating too quickly the whole stack would be dismantked and re stacked with the bales from the centre removed to the outer in the hope they would cool down a bit .

Who knew it was such a precarious process to produce a bale of hay? I always thought spontaneous combustion was akin to alchemy - more myth than science….

Spontaneous combustion from the oxidation of solvents has nothing to do with bacteria. There are many rag services in most cities, but you have to contract their services and pay a monthly fee. Unless you are doing a high volume of work and use a lot of rags it is economically prohibitive. I have been using the red cotton rags that are available from auto supply stores, but to reduce the fiber loss while washing up I wash the rags first which removes quite a bit of the loose fibers. I use my rags until they are entirely covered with ink, then dispose of them. In between uses I let them dry outside to avoid any build-up of fumes in my shop. Here is a very comprehensive paper on solvent combustion, I suggest that it would be a good thing for any printer to know:

http://ucih.ucdavis.edu/docs/i_essay6.pdf

Paul

to all

A few years ago I saw a house which had been gutted because the inhabitants did not treat rags (which had been used for wiping wet paint) with appropriate caution. No one injured by the housefire. If we have one fire because of lack of knowledge, that is one fire too many. Just trying to make users of cleaning rags aware of possibility.

Alan.

Alan.

D.T.P
take a look at plant respiration ,your university of maryland wrote a brilliant paper on it , I assure you that the same results occur in rags that have a reasonably high moisture content .
You should remember that oxidation is a reaction created between moisture and air no chemistry needed . whilst i may have to concede the point that oily rags will heat in a different way because the oil repels moisture and therefore you would have to accept the mixture of chemicals may create heat as the paper you kindly put up for perusal clearly suggests . Any absorbent material will create its own heat with nothing other than the water or dampness within it once the mold and the bacteria begin to work they will generate heat ,thats why piles of horse crap heats up .
There are many ways combustion can be created , without adding anything but damp .
As a side retort , dont tell me i spent many hours as a youngster destacking bales because of self heating for nothing (other than the money ).

I guess the lesson here is to not put ones rags into piles of horse crap.

…words to live by.

i hope the informed chemists on the list will correct me here, but I believe that the oils that are fire hazards are the drying oils used in paints and finishes and some inks. It is the oxidation of the oils as they dry that causes heat leading to combustion in the right conditions. Machine oils, mineral oils, lubricatring oils, they don’t react this way. They would need an external ignition source.
I used to buy gallons of ordinary 20-wt oil from Hurst (they also had 10-wt oil for vaccuum pumps), and 40-wt oil for Heidelbergs from Hoyt in Southern California. If a gallon seems too much, get the blue-label 3-in-1. On my first cylinder press, ATF specified mineral oil of no specific weight, so I used mineral oil laxative from Walgreen’s, which seemed to work well in a central lubrication system of a Kelly.

to all

Well, that seems to have stirred some kind of nest, though I am not sure if all insects have been buzzing yet. No matter what exactly causes spontaneous combustion, if we realise it can happen with a wide variety of materials, maybe we can prevent the blaze before it happens. Anyone care to try some controlled experiments, though a negative result does not prove much.

Alan.

parallel_imp is correct. Saturated hydrocarbon oils are not susceptible to spontaneous heating/combustion at normal temperatures. Drying oils such as linseed oil and tung oil are.

I was most interested in the postings as I was a Fire Investigator for 30 years.parallel_imp and rontxhov are most to the point. Where spontaneous ignition occurs in ordinary combustibles a vegetable component must be available, mineral oils will not self ignite. However in some printing inks there are vegetavle components available. I once investigated a large fire in a printing plant and the point of origin was in the rag bucket, (being an ex printer that was the first place I looked) after doing some chemical analysis it was determined that there was evidence of vegetable oils in the ink samples. The rag bucket was 3 - 4 gallons in size and was packed full the rags in the bottom were packed very tight it seemed like somebody had stood on the top to compress it down. There are other forms of spontaneous eg chemical mismatches, magnification of the sun and friction. The most common form is cooking oil, bleach and cotton or linnen in the correct proportions most common in fast food restaurants I have had mutiple fires with this combination. The components are most stable on their own and when mixed however when slightly heated either in hot water or a commercial or domestic dryer self combustion is almost assured. DAVE

I was most interested in the postings as I was a Fire Investigator for 30 years.parallel_imp and rontxhov are most to the point. Where spontaneous ignition occurs in ordinary combustibles a vegetable component must be available, mineral oils will not self ignite. However in some printing inks there are vegetavle components available. I once investigated a large fire in a printing plant and the point of origin was in the rag bucket, (being an ex printer that was the first place I looked) after doing some chemical analysis it was determined that there was evidence of vegetable oils in the ink samples. The rag bucket was 3 - 4 gallons in size and was packed full the rags in the bottom were packed very tight it seemed like somebody had stood on the top to compress it down. There are other forms of spontaneous eg chemical mismatches, magnification of the sun and friction. The most common form is cooking oil, bleach and cotton or linnen in the correct proportions most common in fast food restaurants I have had mutiple fires with this combination. The components are most stable on their own and when mixed however when slightly heated either in hot water or a commercial or domestic dryer self combustion is almost assured. DAVE