10x
11-15-2006, 11:28 PM
I finally got around to cleaning up a used lyman 45 lube sizer I purchased last summer.
I tried the usual tricks to get the lube to flow, hair dryer, then a heat gun, then I put the darn thing in a pot of boiling soapy water on my turkey cooker.
I got about a cup of wax out and to the surface, and the hi die came out with a great deal of resistance, Skim the crud off the surface and back into the hot water for a couple of minutes.
The previous owner must have been using homemade lube with wax, grease, and graphite in it. The graphite was almost a solid in the nooks crannies and corners in side the sizer. It was a royal pain to get everything out with tooth brushes, brake clean, and small bottle brushes. The wax was a similar consistancy to old melted crayons.
Now the autopsy. The graphite seemed to settle to the bottom, the grease was in the middle and the wax seemed to have migrated to the top of the pressure cylinder. Heat melted the wax, the grease had to be desolved in brake klean and the the graphite/wax mixture at the bottom had turned solid and had to be scrubbed out with brushes. The "lube" left in the hi die would not melt or be desolved but had to be scrubbed out.
Any Lube sizer I have ever cleaned up before this just took about 15 minutes with a hair dryer, pour the hot lube out into a tin cup, and a wipe down with a paper towel and bit of mineral spirits.
Has anyone else ever run into this problem?
I tried the usual tricks to get the lube to flow, hair dryer, then a heat gun, then I put the darn thing in a pot of boiling soapy water on my turkey cooker.
I got about a cup of wax out and to the surface, and the hi die came out with a great deal of resistance, Skim the crud off the surface and back into the hot water for a couple of minutes.
The previous owner must have been using homemade lube with wax, grease, and graphite in it. The graphite was almost a solid in the nooks crannies and corners in side the sizer. It was a royal pain to get everything out with tooth brushes, brake clean, and small bottle brushes. The wax was a similar consistancy to old melted crayons.
Now the autopsy. The graphite seemed to settle to the bottom, the grease was in the middle and the wax seemed to have migrated to the top of the pressure cylinder. Heat melted the wax, the grease had to be desolved in brake klean and the the graphite/wax mixture at the bottom had turned solid and had to be scrubbed out with brushes. The "lube" left in the hi die would not melt or be desolved but had to be scrubbed out.
Any Lube sizer I have ever cleaned up before this just took about 15 minutes with a hair dryer, pour the hot lube out into a tin cup, and a wipe down with a paper towel and bit of mineral spirits.
Has anyone else ever run into this problem?