I was blessed to work with my uncle for many years growing up, and he taught me how they made oil penetrate rust in the depression. His point was that using what you have not only was often the only choice, but frequently proved better than the purchased products.
He said a mixture of a lubricant, with a diluent or oil diluted with something that evaporates had been used for years to do this. By the 1950’s his choice was freshly mixing automatic transmission fluid with equal parts of acetone as he generally always had those handy in his shop, and likely wherever he might be working near.
He cautioned me to only mix as much as I needed as the acetone would evaporate out of the unused mixture. He usually poured these into a metal squirt oil can and sloshed them a bit to mix them.
One of the other things he did that I had never seen anyone do before was on some really difficult pieces that were hanging down from frame rails etc. on old cars was to mix a bit of the mixture with some clay and press it over the item that was frozen. Occasionally depending on how it was oriented, he might build a reservoir of clay around and beneath the part, and squirt the mix into that reservoir to hold it there around the part, even using old speaker magnets to keep it in place times.
Since that time I have used 50/50 mix of ATF and Acetone mixing just what I need, and I am very pleased with the results. Someone said they had seen a shoot out of commercial products like Knocker-Loose, PB Blaster, Liquid Wrench, Kroil and others and the home-made stuff was cheaper and faster. I will look for that and post something else if I find it.
OK, I found one someone else had posted at another site:
The April/May 2007 edition of Machinist's Workshop did a test of penetrating oils where they measured the force required to loosen rusty test devices. Buy the issue if you want to see how they did the test. The results reported were interesting. The lower the number of pounds the better. Mighty interesting results for simple acetone and tranny fluid!
Penetrating oil - Average load - Price per fluid ounce
None .................. 516 pounds .
WD-40 .............. 238 pounds ... $0.25
PB Blaster ......... 214 pounds .. $0.35
Liquid Wrench ... 127 pounds .. $0.21
Kano Kroil ........ 106 pounds .. $0.75
ATF-Acetone mix.. 53 pounds .. $0.10
The ATF-Acetone mix was a 50/50 mix (1 to 1 ratio)
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What my uncle used as an oiler was all metal so the acetone wouldn’t be a factor. Today’s plastics could be a thing to work around but you should find something still available just about anywhere.
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