Elementary question: What is your favorite brand of grease and
method for protecting steel rollers on your mill? How greasy do you
keep them? Do you wipe the grease off during the day and re-grease
at night if weather is humid. I am in a non air-conditioned studio
in humid Philadelphia. In winter, the studio is quite dry. I just
purchased a can of (solid, not spray) multi-purpose lithium grease.
Is this ok to use? Thank you.
Margery F. Cooper @Margery_F_Cooper
Margery, I don’t use grease on my mill at all…except perhaps now
and then on the gears.
On the rollers, I periodically use a light coat of machine oil which
I then promptly wipe off. I keep a cloth cover (its an old blender
cover) over the mill to keep out the moisture here in HUMID south
Florida. Before I put on the cover I lay a double thickness of paper
towels that have been soaked with the machine oil some time ago over
the top roller and let it drape over both rollers. It is not
moist…rather dry but the oil remains locked in. This creates a
nearly impervious barrier to moisture.
By the way, this is a 25 year old Chinese made machine…not very
glorious looking but it works fine and the above procedures have
protected it all these years.
Cheers from Don at The Charles Belle Studio in SOFL where simple
elegance IS fine jewelry! @coralnut2
Elementary question: What is your favorite brand of grease and method for protecting steel rollers on your mill? How greasy do you keep them? Do you wipe the grease off during the day and re-grease at night if weather is humid. I am in a non air-conditioned studio in humid Philadelphia. In winter, the studio is quite dry. I just purchased a can of (solid, not spray) multi-purpose lithium grease. Is this ok to use? Thank you.
I don’t use grease at all. Too messy. Grease is good for things
like the drive or reduction gears, and the bearings themselves, but
for the actual rolls, I prefer oil. I use either a light machine
oil, such as plain old “3-in-one”, or a light grade motor oil.
Machine oils have the advantage of often having anti corrosion
additives, which sounds reasonable to me. The reason for a light
oil instead of grease is simply that I can wipe a light oil back off
the mill before using it if I wish. Clean dry rolls will work better,
grabbing the metal more easily, and giving you a slightly better
surface, than oily or greasy ones. Think about “roll printing”.
Anything on the rolls will affect the surface of the metal. And that
includes oils. After use, a lightly oiled rag is used to again wipe
down the rolls. This cleans off any residue left by the metal, and
re-oils them so they stay clean.
Peter