Feb 26, 2014
Life is unpredictable. Things change. Stuff breaks. You can't count on much, but one fact that seems like an indelible universal truth can be illustrated with this flowchart:
Duct tape fixes things that shouldn't be moving. WD-40 fixes things that should be. These truths we hold dear.
But I recently discovered an exception. A glitch in the matrix. WD-40 doesn't work on the cast iron hinges of a wood stove door. It works for a day or two, but the high heat always wins out in the end, and the creaking sound reappears.
Initially I planned on writing a post about how WD-40 is never not enough. No one has ever said, "I tried WD-40 and it didn't work." It always works. But now I know that's not true. I myself can now say on this day, "I tried WD-40 and it didn't work." A day which will live in infamy. #products
Duct tape fixes things that shouldn't be moving. WD-40 fixes things that should be. These truths we hold dear. But I recently discovered an exception. A glitch in the matrix. WD-40 doesn't work on the cast iron hinges of a wood stove door. It works for a day or two, but the high heat always wins out in the end, and the creaking sound reappears.
Initially I planned on writing a post about how WD-40 is never not enough. No one has ever said, "I tried WD-40 and it didn't work." It always works. But now I know that's not true. I myself can now say on this day, "I tried WD-40 and it didn't work." A day which will live in infamy. #products
In my experience, WD40 is only slightly better than nothing for most tasks. It is a very thin combination of oil and solvents that does tend to creep into very small gaps for lubrication, but it doesn't provide very much because it's so light. It does tend to dissolve some stuff due to its solvent content, but it doesn't dissolve much that isn't organic and even then it doesn't do so very quickly. For lubricating hinges and the like, I've found that a white lithium grease (also available as an aerosol) works much better and doesn't make quite so much mess. PB'laster is significantly more effective as a penetrating oil, given that it actually dissolves rust, unlike WD40. For cleaning things, WD40 isn't terrible, but an actual solvent-based cleaning solution will work much better. WD40 is the classic example of a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none.