Valve Oil Preferences?

[gocsick]

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.

[bloke]

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."

[gocsick]

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.

[bloke]

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.?

[sdloveless]

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%.

[russiantuba]

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.

[arpthark]

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

[bloke]

add 1950's reverb:

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

[bloke]

"bloke should not..."

speaking of the fascist political-economic system...

[tofu]

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.