TubaForum.net

At the risk of giving @bloke a bigger head.... I have to admit he seems to be right yet again...

Last night I noticed the rotors were getting sluggish. Popped out the first one cleaned, reassembled, oiled etc. Was going to do the second but tried a generous amount of lamp oil down the leadpipe instead... Well a few times back and forth through the valve section and the rotors are just as smooth and fast as after the horn was chem cleaned last year.... and the brown nastiness that came out with the dumped oil was impressive.

Then it turns out that the mineral oil I grabbed from the medicine cabinet is pretty much the same thickness as my valve oil thinned lanolin.

You know... usually only my wife gets to be right this often.

I'm not smart.

I'm just old enough to have stumbled across stuff and noticed it.
That's "the science" of the mouthpieces I offer for sale as well.
It's also how I dispense with jacked up tubas and sousaphone's fairly quickly...ie. "Hey, I don't have to take all that crap apart just to fix this little part here."

I was killing time during a very boring University Admin meeting and I had a goofy idea.

@bloke should take his lamp oil put in in bottles with a 100% markup and sell it as premium valve oil. I came up with his label... well I came up with what I wanted then told AI to generate the label because I can't draw for crap.

100%...ok then: $1 for the little squeeze bottles (if bought in large enough quantity) and 50-cents for the oil...

20 cents for a stick-on label...??

How about $2 ? for two oz.?

Years ago there was a brand of bicycle chain lube called "Chain-L". It sold for about $12 for a 4oz (~120 ml) bottle. I, among others at the time, accused the maker of rebottling hypoid gear oil. He swore it wasn't that, but was some magical proprietary oil blend and wouldn't, of course, share any details as to its composition. But, it smelled, looked, and behaved exactly like hypoid gear oil. A friend and I rigged up a couple quick and dirty tests wherein we compared it to Valvoline 80w-90. Neither of us could tell the difference.

Chain-L is no longer made. The proprietor no longer participates in any online bicycling forums, as far as I know. I still believe it was hypoid gear oil.

Right now, you can buy a quart of Valvoline 80w-90 (about 8 bottles of Chain-L) for about $8.

Anyway, the point is that Bloke should mark up the valve oil by a whole lot more than 100%.

I use Alisyn. The story goes the oil was a byproduct of an aerospace contract to not freeze in space, but didn’t work. One of the workers at the factory was a trumpeter and tried it on their valves and loved it.

I have bought it the last two times from the factory and go in person to pick it up. Though it is made locally, no one seems to carry it.

A few drops of oil lasts a week and is extremely consistent. It is a VERY hard oil to use, doesn’t mix with any other oil whatsoever (and some plastics), otherwise it will gum up. It is hard to use after a horn cleaning and takes additional cleaning. When it was introduced to me (it is what my DMA professor used), I was told it had a steep learning curve and was well worth it.

“An oil with a steep learning curve” is not a phrase I was expecting to see!

add 1950's reverb:

VALVE OILS IN SPACE-ACE-ACE-ace-ace !!!!!

"bloke should not..."

speaking of the fascist political-economic system...

The marketing of valve oil has long reminded me of the Snake Oil pitches of old. I laugh at the folks who insist that lamp oil is poor for your health because of the refined petroleum (as if you are inhaling thru the horn) and tout some name brand valve oil including instrument manufacturers own lines (which are likely just private labeled branded that they buy from some outside source).

The idea that most (if any) of these guys are employing a bunch of scientists to test their oils is absurd. I bet most of them are in fact just reselling refined petroleum with some additives added to make it smell different, create different viscosities etc. The synthetic stuff that some pitch tends to gunk up valves and not play well with a lot of folks personal chemistries and any kind of dirt or grease in the horn. The sales mark up on the stuff is completely insane.

I’ve been using ultrapure lamp oil for at least 20 years on all kinds of horns. The only difference is adding a bit of motor oil to create different viscosities for horns with a bit of wear on the valves like my 107 year old helicon. I never suffer valve issues at all since I started using the stuff where as stuff like Hetman’s was a real problem. Plus it’s so cheap I just flood the horn with it. One of those tips (courtesy of Bloke) that you can get here - but I’ll bet dollars to donuts on this —>you won’t see it in the ITEA journal anytime soon.

Blue juice cut by 10% with rubbing alcohol, it works better than it sounds

I would recommend trying mineral oil to thicken lamp oil slightly, rather than motor oil.
I've already posted this, but Walmart equate is the cheapest mineral oil.

bloke wrote: Mon May 12, 2025 10:11 pm I would recommend trying mineral oil to thicken lamp oil slightly, rather than motor oil.
I've already posted this, but Walmart equate is the cheapest mineral oil.

Lamp oil or mineral oil are pretty much the same, both paraffin oil, just the length of the chains differ causing different viscosity. So yes, they mix perfectly

I have a jig of pure paraffin oil that is marketed for pest control, you can pour it on standing water to prevent mosquito larvae. It is slightly to thick for the rotors unfortunately

Yes - if it's really paraffin.

Lamp oil really only needs to burn when used in a lamp, and I've read enough stories about strong smells etc. here to make me suspect that some "lamp oil" is kerosene.

In any case, I would expect mineral oil or motor oil to mix equally well, and with motor oil of the latest grade you're going to get better performance at extremely high temperatures caused by working the valves really fast.

donn wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 5:58 am

Lamp oil really only needs to burn when used in a lamp, and I've read enough stories about strong smells etc. here to make me suspect that some "lamp oil" is kerosene.

Kerosene is basically just impure paraffin lamp oil. "Ultra Pure" type lamp oils should be all alkanes (Cn H2n+2)) which is going to burn really cleanly to C02 + H20 in a lamp ... while kerosene can have other stuff like cyclic naptha compunds, aromatic benzene derived compounds, and alkenes and alkynes.. it is really the aromatic compounds with benzene rings that cause the problems. Historically they came form different sources.. kerosene from petroleum as essentially a waste product after distilling off the lighter oils. Paraffin came from coal as a top tier product - by heating anthracite and driving off really clean oils.

I do know someone who uses denatured kerosene, K1 + isopropyl alcohol, for valve oil. It reeks to high heaven and leaves white waxy deposits on the valves. He brings a bunch of G bugles to DCI finals each year and you can strongly smell the oil if you pick up the horns.

Just throwing this out there, I have a 10 year old jug of "Ultra Pure" lamp oil and it exhibits no odor. So, not all lamp oils.

LAMP OIL

~~Low Odor~~

~~Odorless~~

THESE ARE NOT THE SAME PRODUCT. NOT BY A MILE. Low Odor stinks like hell. It can easily "PERFUME" your entire hourse if spilled. Odorless is… odorless; it has no petroleum smell.

There is also this unfortunate scented, citronella-type stuff, and my last quart of Odorless reeks of fake lemon. If there is going to be a stink emanating from my horns, this one is not too bad, but I still want my Odorless lamp oil back. Hopefully the next quart will work out to be what I actually want.

The weird thing is: the bottler does not list any scented oils for sale, so perhaps they got a batch produced for some other company and decided to bottle it and move it out because… it's just lamp oil.

It makes me wonder whether the scent chemicals will leave residue or buildup. So far, so good.

Yeah. People like Wade know what they're talking about.

Other people who don't have experience using something - and have never tried it - post hand-wringing rhetoric.

As far as buying expensive valve oil and being afraid to use odorless lamp oil, I don't really care. It's not my money. Once I've given advice, I've given it. Also, we stock expensive valve oil and are glad to sell it to people for a good bit more than we pay for it ourselves.

The mineral oil that I buy in the pharmaceutical department for a good bit under 3 bucks at Walmart is the stuff that they call food grade. There are instructions on there re: consumption. Right on the front it says "odorless, tasteless, colorless". I've seen name brand for 12 bucks, but I prefer to pay about $2.50 from Walmart. I is sold as a laxative, but I use it for laxing slide friction. It's just enough thicker than lamp oil to seem to be a really good thing for precisely aligned and fitted tuba slides - as well as for lubricating hinge tubes, links, and rotor bearings, and if a tiny bit of it migrates into the valves, I haven't experienced any valve slow down due to that, and nor have I experienced any gumming.

The reason I recommend mixing it with lamp oil (to increase viscosity if desired with old valves that could probably use rebuilding) is because - just like the odorless lamp oil - it (well...) also has no odor whereas when I've mixed motor oil with lamp oil it adds an odor. That's the only reason.

I suspect some people may have used some other products that they thought were odorless ultra pure lamp oil and were not, or else they used some that was five years old and it become putrid and smelly - just like very old gasoline does and very old valve oil does.

As a post script, I've sort of tested ultra pure paraffin lamp oil quite a few times with young people (secondary school and college aged customers) who I suspect still have very sensitive olfactory glands, and - when they put their nose up to the one gallon jug with the lid removed - they don't smell anything.

gocsick wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 7:29 am Kerosene is basically just impure paraffin lamp oil.

In case anyone is looking for clarity on this point, I understand "impure paraffin" to mean "not paraffin", right? If the product label says "paraffin" or "paraffinic", then it's 100% alkanes.

(Immaterial for me - I haven't found anything of the sort over here. The labels aren't real clear about what's in there, but the one I tried turned out to be more like charcoal starter. Plus I don't have an internal combustion vehicle any more, and I wouldn't care to buy a whole quart of motor oil just to use a few drops to beef up some lamp oil.)

I also do not want to have an open quart of motor oil in my shop for many years while I use it a few drops at a time, so I add 3-in-ONE oil to my lamp oil, if it ever needs to be thickened.

I have mineral oil but use it in my slide grease concoction.