I mixed mineral oil and lamp oil together, and

[bloke]

MY HORN BLEW UP !!!

Off-the-shelf straight mineral oil (under $3 for Equate brand - c. 18¢/oz.) might be OK for considerably-worn rotors/pistons.

It's just a bit thick for "good" rotors/pistons, and (I'd say) certainly too thick for "newish" valves.

My F tuba rotors are very good, not new, not badly worn.

I "thinned" mineral oil with lamp oil, and I believe (first blow/valve-wiggle) I like it.

bloke "Nope...I'm just not paying $4/$5/$6/$7/$8/$9 for an ounce or two of 'valve oil'. Good-and-clean valves/casings (including porting leading into casings, which are ignored during cleanings) just aren't all that particular."

[MiBrassFS]

On worn piston valves I usually go the other way. I add drops of mineral oil to lamp oil until it does the job.

Great minds!

[Three Valves]

I put valve oil in my lamps.

Smells like band camp!

[donn]

Motor vehicle oil works great to increase viscosity.

Most players will probably be happy with whatever motor oil is on hand (and not much of it!) but you may as well know that for modern valves, service rating SN is recommended. SM, SL and SJ may be available, and if the tuba dates to before 2010, 2004 or 2001 respectively, those should be all right.

[bloke]

> Some will mock me for using stuff that valve oil mixers/makers use to make their concoctions, and...
> I will look askance at others who pay $6/oz. and - having paid that much, and with replacement micro-bottles of it being "downtown at the music store" or "has to be ordered from Amazon" - don't oil adequately/generously apply for good lubrication and discouragement of hard lime deposits.

Every time I play any of my instruments, on the front end they get a very generous/very affordable valve section soaking with oil...


...and a little bit of junk still does collect in my instruments, but I can blow it out the main slide tube with high-velocity hot water (rather than having to do chem/ultrasound/etc. jobs on my instruments), and it's not hard lime deposits - which cement themselves to the interiors instruments and promote red-rot.


I had been using 30W (cheap non-detergent - refilling a needle oiler every so often) to oil bearing surfaces.
I'll probably switch over to straight mineral oil. I'm not detecting the scent of the very small amounts of the 30W (which - undeniably - does have an odor), but - then again - I'm old, and my sense of smell might not be as good as it once one - particularly since the plannedemic...thus: switching to mineral oil (cheapo: "Equate" brand) for bearing surfaces.

[iiipopes]

On worn piston valves I usually go the other way. I add drops of mineral oil to lamp oil until it does the job.

Great minds!

I do that also, especially for my flugel and a Pan Am souzy I am playing until Lee Stofer gets my "real" 36K done.

[kingrob76]

Try mixing in some STP - it's the racers edge. All the mock audition winners are using it these days.

[bloke]

Try mixing in some STP - it's the racers edge. All the mock audition winners are using it these days.

In the past, I used that stuff on slides, but the surfaces which are exposed from pulling slides out an inch or so expose it and it tends to mix with valve oil. I tend to suspect that that's what happens with a lot of people's tubas with whatever kind of slide grease and whatever kind of valve oil when they complain about valve oil becoming thicker/gooey or something like that.

For quite a while, whatever I choose to use as valve oil is what I use on the slides of my instruments,

and I apologize for sort of screwing up your joke with a serious answer.

[kingrob76]

I apologize for sort of screwing up your joke with a serious answer.

It actually works really well on worn valves when mixed correctly with a more typical oil.

[bloke]

I apologize for sort of screwing up your joke with a serious answer.

It actually works really well on worn valves when mixed correctly with a more typical oil.

Yes...I've mixed that with oil to test old tubas with SUPER-worn valves (to see if they were worth rebuilding).
Today (re: pricing) almost none are worth rebuilding.

[Yorkboy]

I hooked into Bloke’s method some time ago and have never regretted it.

[Wally]

I use Bunker C. Works great once it warms up!

[Stryk]

So are the proportions a Blokeplace Corporation, Inc secret?

[bloke]

So are the proportions a Blokeplace Corporation, Inc secret?

I'm messing around right now with four parts lamp oil and one part cheapass mineral oil.

It doesn't seem to be slowing down my rotors any. They never stuck at all or felt the least bit bad with straight lamp oil, but they feel just slightly silkier with the mineral oil mixed in. It's not something that I have to have as far as a tactile experience, but it really doesn't add anything significant at all to the cost of the mix, so why not?

My f tuba (which as is known worldwide is the world's greatest F tuba ) is over 40 years old. I wouldn't label the rotors as worn, but they're also not new. I might add just a bit more mineral oil - percentage wise - for some oil for that instrument, but it probably doesn't really matter.

I did just dump some straight mineral oil in the F tuba and the valves felt pretty gushy and schmaltzy. I'm pretty sure that 80/20 thing would be just fine for that instrument - after simultaneously thinking and typing this.

... but some of y'all can continue with your synthetics and your $5 an ounce stuff, I'm sure it's way better, and way better than a good cleaning.

[Schlitzz]

I remember having lessons with Reginald Fink. He used regular vegetable oil for his Conn euph back in the day.

[donn]

I wonder if that's what happened to a baritone I had for a while, and was the cause of the whitish waxy gunk that accumulated in the piston valves. I should have saved up some of that stuff and experimented with solvents etc., because it was undoubtedly lingering elsewhere in the instrument and very likely the causee of the sour note that made it more or less unusable.

Vegetable oil users (of which there are hopefully none) should exercise great care to clean that stuff out of the whole length of the instrument with a strong detergent on a very regular basis, like every week, before it starts to polymerize.

[MiBrassFS]

I knew a guy that worked as a locksmith for a time. He figured if it worked for locks, it would work on his trumpets, so he started using liquid Teflon spray. He told everyone how smart he was and that we were all dumb for not using it. He was wrong. Made a huge mess and eventually “locked” everything up.

Another trumpet player I know uses a needle oiler full of a concoction based on Mobil 1. I avoid sitting too close to him because what ever he has in that bottle STINKS!

Trumpet players…

[bloke]

I've encountered instruments where students - and who knows who - put Wesson (seed) oil in instruments. Everything was cemented and - not being petroleum-based - there was no petroleum based solvent that could dissolve it out of the instrument. Boiling sort of works, but you have to find something large enough to fit an instrument into it and yet still be able to get the water boiling. In the future, I don't plan on accepting any Wesson oil instruments for cleaning/repair.

Both mineral oil and lamp oil are odorless. Lamp oil will become putrid after quite a long time (years). Gasoline does the same thing, and petroleum-based valve oil - which often contains lamp oil - does the same thing. Enough people who are reading this have encountered some really old (branded) valve oil that stinks. It's probably not a good idea to purchase lamp oil off of the shelf at a store, because it could have been sitting there for years (as well as likely being overpriced). I only buy it online. I also buy it from the cheapest place, because I figure that will be the fastest seller with the most restocking - so it will be the freshest.

Most people probably won't go through a gallon of lamp oil, but my rare purchases usually include a couple gallons which are often in a single box. I have other uses for it out in the shop other than just oiling valves, we also have oil lamps in the house for power outages, and - again - I am pretty generous with oil when oiling my own instruments prior to playing them. It is also offered in half gallon sizes, and that's probably a pretty good size even though it cost more per ounce. I think the thing to do - for quite a few people - is to share its cost with some friends, but they probably need to be friends who are not into valve oil voodoo. A little funnel that's available at Harbor Freight is pretty handy for putting it in old valve oil squeeze bottles. (The nipples pull out of those.)

Mineral oil - in the way that it is typically sold over the counter - is more viscous than lamp oil, and it's probably pretty good for musical instrument bearing oil. It's probably fine to put mineral oil in a needle oiler to use for hinge screws rotor carriages, Minibal links, rotor bearings, and tuning slides. When tuning slides are really close to valves, I personally tend to use the same oil that I put on the valves on those particular slides - to avoid the valve oil and the slide-whatever mixing and thickening the valve oil, but that's just me.

Motor oil and anything with any sort of an odor are not things that I'm using. I don't care for scented valve oil, other than Blue Juice, because the scent of that stuff is the same sent as the old green LeBlanc valve oil from 50 years ago, and it kind of reminds me of my childhood.

Finally, I tend to suspect that people who purchase four or five dollars an ounce valve oil will tend to view it as something sort of precious, and tend to use very little and tend to not use it every time they play - due to the expense (as well as having to drive across town to repurchase it or having to reorder it online or whatever), whereas oil that costs a dime to fifteen cents an ounce will tend to be used generously and often. It doesn't hurt the inside of a valve section to over-oil it, but it can hurt one to under-oil it.

[Schlitzz]

Another trumpet player I know uses a needle oiler full of a concoction based on Mobil 1. I avoid sitting too close to him because what ever he has in that bottle STINKS!

Trumpet players…

Viola players and their rosin. The trumpet player probably eats a lot of fried cabbage and cheese too?