{"id":5279,"date":"2019-07-24T05:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/kroil\/"},"modified":"2019-07-21T16:14:50","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T23:14:50","slug":"kroil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/kroil\/","title":{"rendered":"Kroil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kroil<\/a> ($15) is an extremely effective penetrating lubricant. Almost every professional machine shop I’ve been in has a bottle of this sitting prominently beside the workbench. I first saw it about 8 years ago, and asked the mechanic why he used it. His words are the same I now say to those who ask me: It will unstick ANYTHING. <\/p>\n

I frequently take apart antique machinery or general equipment. There is almost always rust, grime, burned grease, metal shavings, and the wear of decades that prevent me from separating bolts from nuts, pins from holes, or keeping sliding surfaces from doing anything BUT sliding. I’ve used every possible penetrating lubricant on the market. Some worked OK, but nothing really was “magic” until I found Kroil. Not many products make me laugh with glee. But the satisfying twist of an otherwise impossible-to-remove bolt or the turn of a shaft that was rusted solid now make me smile because of this little orange can.<\/p>\n

Kroil doesn’t work instantly. It takes between a few minutes and a few days (for extremely large bearing surfaces) to work its magic. I once let it sit for a week on a 300 pound flywheel that was being very stubborn, and it came right off.<\/p>\n

Kroil is not for general lubrication purposes. It’s very thin (which is part of how it works) and is not very sticky. But that’s not the reason I use it; I use it to get things apart. Kroil has a weird creeping capability, it finds its way up and across metal surfaces like some sort of strange science fiction amoeba. After I use Kroil to separate things, I’ll typically clean them completely (dip in mineral spirits) air-blast to remove residue, and then re-oil with a more permanent lubricant. The Kroil won’t hurt anything if it stays, but I like to get a thicker material in everywhere to avoid having to fix the problem again in a few years.<\/p>\n

It’s somewhat hard to find in a retail setting. I’ve never seen it in a hardware store, but that doesn’t mean some don’t carry it. (The label on my bottle says “For industrial use only – not for retail sale” which is somewhat antiquated.) I typically get it directly from kanolabs.com<\/a>, though eBay also might have some good deals. There are now several variants of Kroil including graphite and silicone, but I stick with the old-fashioned stuff since I haven’t read the data enough on the other mixtures to figure out if it’s worth changing.<\/p>\n

If someone asked me what critical items I’d want for my toolbox, this would be among them. It comes at an even higher value than general-purpose sprays like WD-40. Simply put, Kroil is the most useful lubricant I know of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unsticking stuff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[83],"tags":[1350],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33957,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions\/33957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}