Coal Oil??

[mediclimber]

Okay, so I keep hearing about soaking ramrods in coal oil so they are somewhat flexible. My CVA Mountain Rifle ramrod just gave up the ghost. I have a replacement fiberglass/plastic one that works, but just doesn't look right. I bought a new piece of wood and the appropriate ends so I can make one, but, what is this coal oil thing? Where does one get it? Every one I ask about it looks at me like I just got out of the happy house. What should I soak the new rod in and for how long?

 

[R. Miller]

i soak mine in linseed oil ,works well for me. the longer you can soak them the better.I think coal oil is the same as kerosene.I put my rods in a piece of thin wall conduit(one end plugged) and pour full of linseed oil stickwalker

 

[David Sbur]

Kerosene. Try looking at this link below...
[url] http://geography.about.com/library/misc/uckerosene.htm[/url]

Just the old fashion name for it. I soak a few ramrods every now and then FWIW.

 

[Norskie]

Yep, coal oil be kerosene. A more expensive and less smelly alternative is neatsfoot oil. Ramrods benefit by being soaked in an oil that does not harden. That keeps them flexible.

 

[RiverRat]

I use Automatic Trans Fluid. It gives a pale red color to the rod and after a few weeks in the soak, the rod seems as flexible as if it were made of plastic. I also have added some min-wax wood stain to the ATF for a darker color.

 

[boar]

Mediclimer In back of Dixie Gun Catalog Has the story about soaking the ramrods. Dilly

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Coal oil has not been around since the early days, was made by heating coal in a retort furnace, gases were cooled, liquefying into, viola, coal oil.

What is called coal oil today is kerosene, a refined petroleum product. How many warnings about petroleum products rotting stock wood? Common sense should kick in about now as to soaking ramrods in such.

 

"I bought a new piece of wood and the appropriate ends"
I hope you didn't buy a hardware store dowel, they do not have the proper strength for a ramrod, and tend to break diagonally at the very worst time (when you're trying to push down a ball-get the picture)not a pretty sight. You need to buy a straight grained hickory rod. Track, MBS, and TVM have them pretty cheap, under 5 bucks a pop, and in different sizes. I'm not sure if you were aware that dowels do not make good ramrods. Bill

 

[Birdman]

Mediclimber, Bill is giving ya some REAL!!good advice. Helped a buddy get a rod removed from his hand one time n I can tell ya true that it hurt. Ya need the straight grained rods made just for rammers, dowels are an accident waiting to happen. You can also split one out yourself if ya have the wood to do it with, really isn't that hard to do, more scary then anything else. YMHS Birdman

 

[shifty-eyed_one]

I had an original rod from T/C do that very thing. Broke with very little pressure on it, but while "ramming" a patched ball down. Good thing I was watching the progress, because it broke diagonally with some weird grain and came very close to impaling my hand. :shocked2:

 

[mediclimber]

Yeah, I went to Dixon's and got a couple so I would have extra. Stopped at Home Depot and tried to get a quart of linseed oil but all they had was gallons. Stil cann't figure out why you'd want a gallon of that stuff.

 

[mike alexandre]

Please excuse the thought train because I might be wrong, but when I was a kid and coal was used in power stations/gas plants etc the liquid by- product was creosote which was used to soak railway sleepers and fence posts in.
The Kerosene I know of is a refined oil/petrol product not from coal.
I have heard of ram rods being soaked in diesel.

 

[dlemaster]

I did read recently that someone was soaking ram rods in a PVC tube filled with vegetable oil. That might work too.

Regards, Dave

 

[Birddog6]

IMHO, the story of the "Old Timers" soaking anything in Coal Oil or Kerosene is a total falsehood & didn't actually happen.

Now think about it.......

Coal Oil or Kerosene was discovered in ? 1855 or so, but it was not really in Mass production til late 1800's or early 1900's, and then not affordable to the regular guy......

Then you have WWI, WWII, using it up faster than they could make it, etc. People didn't have money to waste on Kerosene & such to soak a axe in or a RR in for a gun that was hardly in use, with the modern weapons made then all of which being cartridge types.........

I think Mr. Turners referrence in the Dixie Catalog to the "Ol Timers", should have stated "Ol Timers from the 1950's" !!

Does it work ? Some say it does, some say it is a total wast of time. However it is cheap to try if ya want to give it a go.

IMHO, a good hickory RR with no grain runout will last your lifetime IF you use it properly.......
:thumbsup:

 

[djnye]

hear-hear mr. birddog. i don't know the pedigree for soaing, but the usual reasons of "for strength and flexibility" seem weak at best. by its nature, hickory is a very pliant and strong wood that spit very well and tends to have straight grain. to suggest that hickory is made more flexible with soaking seems pointless--a ramrod does not require that much flexibility(actually, if it were too flexible it would be hard to use.) the only advantaage i can see is that it might add some dimensional stability so that the rod does not swell as much in wet conditions and stick in the thimbles.

take care, daniel

 

[dlemaster]

Birddog6
I don't neccessarily disagree with you but I will throw in here that I was told by my father and both Grand Fathers, who were farmers, that it was a common practice to wipe down hogs with coal oil or kerosine to kill lice back through the depression and before. They even hug up burlap bags between two poles that were kept soaked in kerosine so the hogs would delice themselves. So it must not have been very expensive then. Possibly after WW1 production increases and methods lowered the price. I know our family was dirt poor through the 1st half of the 20th century so they wouldn't be using anything that was very expensive.

Regards, Dave

 

[Birddog6]

Hmmmmm.......... Well, I guess my dad & granddad were poorer than dirt poor, cause they couldn't afford a luxury such as coal oil or kerosene for a hog rub........ They used old used motor oil out of the cars, trucks, farm machinery. And the same thing was used when I was a kid growing up in southern Ohio. If fact, anything that needed oiled was oiled with used oil, including the dirt roads.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Diesel, gasoline, benzene, kerosene and the other senes are just refined fractionated petroleum products by other names.

Kerosene distillation was first invented in the mid 1800's (in Nova Scotia I think it was by a Scotchman) retorted from kerogen (hence the kerosene) found in albertite ( a big legal battle at the time issued over whether it was coal or oil shale) Coal gas in the 1800's was used to light city lamps at night, it was also made from retorted coal and coal oil could also be extracted at the same time.

 

[rebel727]

Kerosene was first refined from coal by Atlantic Canada's Abraham Gesner in 1846. Before that they used whale oil. Tempering ramrods by soaking them in kerosene has been around a long, long time. It doesn't make them rot nor does it make them mushy it just gives them a lil springiness. You can even soak untreated pine posts in kerosene or diesel fuel either one and use them for fence posts or whatever and they won't rot and bugs won't get in them.

 

[mike alexandre]

So does that mean we have two things called Kerosene, one from oil which aeroplanes and power station turbines run on and another for painting pigs from coal