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Post by NM Stone Supply on Feb 15, 2012 21:34:01 GMT -5
Is it ok to use mineral oil from the feed store?
Is real lapidary oil that much better?
The mineral oil is $15 a gallon.
Any thoughts on this would be great. I got my new saw all cleaned and ready for a blade and oil.
Jason
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Post by johnjsgems on Feb 15, 2012 21:52:38 GMT -5
As long as it isn't too thick or flash point too low it should work fine. If you can find an oil distributor look for tech grade or white mineral oil. It won't be food grade but may cost less.
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Post by Hard Rock Cafe on Feb 15, 2012 22:52:34 GMT -5
Lots of people use the horse laxative from Tractor Supply. The last tech grade white mineral oil I bought was the same cost.
Chuck
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Post by NM Stone Supply on Feb 15, 2012 23:49:37 GMT -5
We have a Tractor Supply here so I am going with that one.
Anyone know how many gallons for a 20" saw? + / -
How deep should the blade be in the oil?
Thanks for all the help, I have a lot of water saws 10" to 24". They are great for soft stone but had to get a real saw for the hard stuff. I am new to this.
Jason
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Post by catmandewe on Feb 16, 2012 0:04:08 GMT -5
Horse Laxitive is food grade mineral oil, tech grade mineral oil is the same stuff except the food grade is packaged in a sterile room. Most 20" saws take about 5 gallons give or take, I have one that uses 4 and one that uses 8 gallons. You should be about half an inch deep into the oil with your blade for splash lubrication.
Most real lapidary oil is white mineral oil based with some additives to keep it from vaporizing or foaming, you can add the additives yourself if you want, I don't usually use any unless it is real hot then I will add some Bardahl no smoke to keep the mist down. Occasionally I add a bottle of baby oil for the fragrance but it doesn't last long.
Good luck with it................Tony
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Post by NM Stone Supply on Feb 16, 2012 0:52:50 GMT -5
Thanks guys, so after cutting slabs do I just wipe them down or do I have to wash the oil off?
Is the vapor pretty bad to breath in?
Jason
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Post by catmandewe on Feb 16, 2012 1:43:22 GMT -5
I wipe the oil off the slab and back into the saw, then I put the slab in a bucket of water with degreaser mixed in with it. When my bucket gets full I take them all into the kitchen and wash them off in the sink. Some people use cat litter which absorbs the oil off the slabs well, I don't use it because all the neighbor's cats like it as well.
Breathing the vapor can give you silicosis, which is a lung disease you really don't want. I normally wait until the mist has abated or hold my breath if I really want to see what just came off the saw, cause you know, sometimes you just can't wait!
Tony
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Post by NM Stone Supply on Feb 16, 2012 8:58:38 GMT -5
That's for sure.
Thanks for the helpfull info.
Jason
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garock
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since February 2006
Posts: 1,168
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Post by garock on Feb 16, 2012 10:00:43 GMT -5
Mr Jason, I use mineral oil from Tractor Supply on my 10 inch saw and I have no problems with it other than is is messy when you clean it out.
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Post by jakesrocks on Feb 16, 2012 10:46:47 GMT -5
Jason, if you're not in a big hurry to use your slabs, you could always do what I do. I wipe the excess oil off, then stand them outside in old toast racks. In my area within half an hour they have a coating of dust on them. Within a couple days the dust has absorbed all of the oil. Then I give them a quick rinse under an outdoor faucet. Thrift stores usually have a bunch of the toast racks real cheap, if your wife doesn't want you to use hers.
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Post by johnjsgems on Feb 16, 2012 10:54:49 GMT -5
You want to cover bottom cutting rim of blade. You can fill the saw to that level with water to see how much it holds (either drain and measure or measure going in. If the saw holds 5 gallons buy enough to top off when using. I have kitty litter in one of those cheap storage containers you see on sale after Christmas with the hinged lids. The food grade oil washes off easier than the nasty stuff in my big saw though. I have to leave the slabs in the litter for several days and then use degreaser. With food grade you can probably just soak in a degreaser and then rinse.
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Post by deb193redux on Feb 16, 2012 16:29:57 GMT -5
I use a water bucket with soap and degreaser. For some more course/porous jasper, where the oil seemed to remain in the crevases, I use a little tri sodium phosphate (from paint HomeDepot) and it cuts right through it.
Where I find the kitty litter real useful is when I spill oil on the concrete floor of the garage. I whipe what I can, and then put down litter to grab what remains. Sometimes still have to mop with degreaser.
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Post by NM Stone Supply on Feb 16, 2012 18:16:01 GMT -5
Well I had another pretty lucky day. I took some stone up to a rock shop in Albuquerque, at first he said he would not want to trade for the rhyolite but after I showed him a polished piece he changed his mind. I trded stone for a 20" lapidary blade. It is a china made but for my first one it will work. I picked up the only 2 gallons of mineral I could find in albuquerque. The saw took the 2 gallons and the blade is in 1/2 inch or so. I cut 2 slabs so far, this saw is so slow but I guess that is good for hard stone. The cut is clean and almost looks polished. It takes about 30 min to cut 4 - 5 inches. I will post some slab pictures later. I can cut about 30 onyx slabs in 30 min on my 24" MK block saw. The oil is messy no matter how you look at things. I will get the hang of it. Thanks again for all the info. Jason
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milto
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since January 2010
Posts: 162
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Post by milto on Feb 16, 2012 18:49:44 GMT -5
Measure your cutting speed. It sounds pretty good. My 12 inch cuts at 1inch every 5 minutes and leaves a nice cut on the slab. My speed is not variable so this is a good compromise speed.
Milt
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Jasper-hound
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since June 2010
Posts: 208
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Post by Jasper-hound on Feb 16, 2012 22:06:21 GMT -5
Better to go slow than too fast and cause binding and damaging of the blade. Good thread.
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sticksinstones
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since February 2012
Posts: 117
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Post by sticksinstones on Feb 19, 2012 0:29:17 GMT -5
I buy Shell Pella (light base mineral oil with no additives) in 55 gallon drums from the local oil supply distributor. I also use degreaser (greased lightning is my current choice) cut with water to put the stones in immediately after cutting. Like another poster, I let them soak in this until there's a bucket full, at which point I put on my chemical gloves and wash them with a dish brush in a second bucket of clean degreaser and water (extra points if it's warm water). But this only gets the stuff on the surface. Oil soaks into the cracks and in the actual pores of the stone while it's being cut. The technique of just letting them sit in the sun is probably doing more to encourage the rest to absorb than to actually come out of the stone. Depending on what you're doing, it might be important to remove the rest of it.
In my case, I'm typically polishing slabs and some of the stages involve hand sanding on a high speed belt sander. If you have oil in the stone, the sand paper will tend to skid over the surface rather than cut and it dramatically increases the sanding time. If you get tired of sanding a rock to try to polish it and it seems like it's taking a long time, you might be lubing your sand paper and dramatically reducing it's cutting speed. This can also really hinder your final polish results because the intermediate stages weren't complete.
To get completely oil free rocks, almost everything I cut goes through an old oven (regular kitchen range type) that I re-wired to run off of 110v. The thermostat is set to 225 degrees but I haven't ever measured the actual temp. Most rocks are done after a day, but some can take two or even longer if it's really porous. It just depends on the stone. I go until the puffs of smoke stop coming out of the oven when I open the door.
You could do the same thing on a smaller scale with a toaster oven but I don't know how insulated that is - you might burn as much electricity as I do in my big oven! Don't do it indoors as it is nasty smoke. some batches get to smoking pretty good, and while I've not had any fire issues after a dozen or so years of doing it this way I've always understood that an open flame could ignite that hydrocarbon rich smoke and make a nice flash.
Many stones are more porous than you think and hold more oil in them after cutting than you realize. If you're making jewelry, it can be an irritant. Put a few cabs you've cut in the oven sometime and you might be surprised how much smoke you generate!
For me the benefits are numerous. The oil dried thoroughly out of the cracks makes them much easier to clean before sealing and therefore they disappear a lot better. The sanding time is greatly reduced (by multiples in many cases) and my sanding belts last for hundreds of stones instead of 10's. And lastly, nothing ever smells like cutting oil if you leave it in the sun on a window sill which many of my specimens are likely to do.
The downsides are the delay in drying them out (if you're in a hurry the best method is hot water and dawn dish soap), the potential extra power consumption, and some stones will change color even at these low temps. Greens and reds seem to be the most vulnerable (presumably because of iron) but it isn't always a degradation - I've had some nice petrified wood from Sweet Home, Oregon, take on a really appealing rusty red tone when it started out as all yellow after a night in the 225 degree oven! It's a good idea to test a piece of new material that you aren't sure about in the oven before you put a large batch of something you really love through it if you don't know how heat affects it (the vast majority won't be altered at all).
Oh - before you go toast that cab you made for your wife, remember that if you've already put it in an epoxy or used anything else organic on it that it will probably not like being heated that high for very long before it gets brittle and/or changes color - so only use your oven to test the efficiency of your cleaning method on something that's just rock and cutting oil!
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Post by NM Stone Supply on Feb 19, 2012 12:46:23 GMT -5
Thanks, I might be polishing some slabs soon and thats some great info on the paper skiding over the stone.
Jason
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Post by paulshiroma on Mar 11, 2012 23:54:45 GMT -5
Ressurecting this thread ... I noticed that "tech grade mineral oil" was mentioned. Is this essentially what some folks are using: store.steoil.com/crystal-plus-tech-grade-mineral-oil-70t-1-gal/? It's only about two or three dollars cheaper than the Covington oil I'm using now but three dollars is three dollars and I'm tempted to give this a try. Would appreciate opinions or feedback if anyone has used this brand. Thanks Paul
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darstcreek77
has rocks in the head
Member since April 2011
Posts: 673
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Post by darstcreek77 on Mar 12, 2012 7:26:03 GMT -5
I started buying my m/oil from heb grocecy store at 1.48 a pint ( only comes in pints), I get funny looks checking out !
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Post by catmandewe on Mar 12, 2012 12:06:54 GMT -5
Paul, that is the same stuff. If you want to pay for shipping I can get it for you for $10 per gallon, I ship them in crates with saws when I sell them, but I have never shipped just a 5 gallon pail by itself so I am not sure how much the shipping would be.
Tony
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