I had noticed the threads decaying, but hadn't twigged why. Wondered if it was just reducing the internal friction that holds the fibres together??
John -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of Julia Say Sent: 14 January 2011 14:28 To: Bo Albrechtsen; northumbrian Small Pipes Subject: [NSP] Re: [nsp] re-conditioning ... On 14 Jan 2011, Bo Albrechtsen wrote: > /Julia is perfectly right/ in exclaiming her "aaaaaaaagh" ! Thank you, I have been well trained! > Vegetable oil such as the cold press, extra virgin etc .... in time any such > oil will change > from being an oil and into first a gummy substance ..which was known as a snotomer in the Polymer Research Unit in which I spent 10 years as a technician. As I've said before. Wonderful term, so descriptive and generally recognisable. > Olive oil will solidify a lot slower than > linseed oil but it will become sticky and gluey relatively fast Particularly when in contact with metals such as brass and nickel silver whose components are sometimes part of catalysts - ie they speed the process up. Which I'm convinced doesn't help. > Paraffin oil/liquid paraffin etc > etc is a mineral-oil product which is cheap, not drying and does not > smell at all. It does tend to evaporate however very slowly over time I have observed a tendency for it to start causing rotting of the cotton threads that I use, a process I'm still keeping an eye on and I'm not drawing any conclusions yet. At present it's just something to bear in mind. Others disagree. Julia To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
