Titanium thread grease.

[lyte~speede]

fyrstormer...

Your magic bullet is found in post #1 of this thread. BUT, Your ratio of
"1 thimble to a film canister" is WAY TOO MUCH soda. Try the amount of soda that will stick to your dry finger tip with a drop or two of your favorite non petroleum based thin liquid lubricant.

 

[fyrstormer]

fyrstormer...

Your magic bullet is found in post #1 of this thread. BUT, Your ratio of
"1 thimble to a film canister" is WAY TOO MUCH soda. Try the amount of soda that will stick to your dry finger tip with a drop or two of your favorite non petroleum based thin liquid lubricant.

I worked up to the amount of baking soda I have in the lithium grease now. It didn't start out that high. Maybe mixed with oil the amount should be lower, but mixed with grease a much higher concentration is optimal. It got smoother and smoother the more I added. I'm starting to think I'm just turning the grease into something resembling Ti Prep, but whatever, it works.

On second thought, the aluminum grease is crap, at least by itself. Didn't like the feel at all. I'll have to wait until the Teflon powder arrives before I can try anything else. I expect the Teflon powder to act even better as a rolling agent than the baking soda, but I'll probably keep the baking soda too as it seems to providing a thickening effect to the grease as well.

BTW, it seems to make a big difference whether or not you "break-in" the threads before applying a suitable lubricant; I broke-in the threads on my LunaSol, but not on my PD-S, and the PD-S has much better film retention than the LunaSol does. Live and learn, I guess. I wonder if there's a way to restore the roughness on the threads on my LunaSol? Hmm...

 

[fyrstormer]

The teflon powder arrived today. Man, is that stuff hard to work with! It damn near flows like water it has so little cohesion. (maybe dry powder snow is a better comparison.) I mixed some into my batches of sodium and lithium grease which already have baking soda added, and there's a distinct improvement. I'm not sure the baking soda is even necessary at this point, though it might make for a good inexpensive filler/thickener for the grease. (The teflon powder is ~$5/oz, so I'm trying not to waste it.)

Anyway, now even when the threads scrape, they don't have the same feeling like they're tearing pieces off each other. Progress is being made. I'll have to keep playing to get the ratios right, but I think this is the right track.

Interesting side note: I think at this point I've reached a 1:1 ratio of solids to grease, and the grease is still very soft, somewhere between thick hair gel and kindergarten craft paste. It's amazing how much stuff you can mix into it without it getting all gritty and nasty.

 

[fyrstormer]

I was getting fed up with the way the titanium threads could slough off anything I put on them, so I decided to try a different tack: I mixed together a bunch of sticky oils containing what are called "climbing agents", and added teflon powder to it. The result is something resembling warm Crisco, but extremely sticky when squeezed down to a thin film. Thus far this is sticking to the titanium better than anything else I've tried. It kinda feels like lubricating the threads with wet glue that never dries, which is to say there's a fair amount of resistance, but it's otherwise very smooth -- no grinding sensation.

I'm still playing with other rolling agents besides the teflon to see if there's anything that can be done to reduce the stickiness, but even if I can't come up with anything better I can be satisfied with this.