Bear grease and beeswax
Wringing out a mink gives a feller a fine product, but it just ain’t sporting to pick on somethin’ that size.
I find a bear that’s got into some honey. Then, I wring that bear. When I’ve got enough grease out of him, I wring out the bees and mix that wax and grease together.
Vaccines don’t cause autism, but
if you keep soaking your hands in dirty engine oil, you will be sorry. Just google and check all the warnings.
Still, I must congratulate you on a relatively serious topic choice.
Old Tugs
In years past fuel oil was stored against the wood hull, and bilge oil was allowed to accumulate against the wooden hull. These hulls are preserved to these modern days as a result! This doesn’t account for the years of bad practices and horrible pollution.
Good ol Omi Daiber
A serious answer
A fun thread,but as a living history participant who wears leather moccasins a lot.I searched for the best leather waterproofing I could find. I mix melted beeswax and mink oil(the pure natural stuff)about 1 to4 radio,heat it and my boots,and brush it in.Best treatment I have found.
Turtle
Most “mink oil” isn’t actually mink oil
It’s typically made from fat from other, more common farm animals. You can still find the real stuff, but you really have to look for it.
Wood is cellulose, primarily.
Skin is protein. That said, yes, a hide stored in a vat of petroleum distillates will stay somewhat preserved, though you’d probably want to avoid spending any time with it, much less use it to make a pair of durable shoes.
or work the fryer at burger king
Skin is not a good barrier against
hydrocarbons or most chemicals.They are easily absorbed and quickly transported all over your body.
here you go
– Last Updated: Jan-28-11 9:35 AM EST –
Here's an MSDS sheet on 'waste oil'.
Read Section 3 and then decide for yourself if it's something you think you should use to preserve an article of clothing to which your skin is exposed.
http://www.safety-kleen.com/msds/81451rev9-20-07.pdf
This has got to be one of the stupidest
Things I have ever seen posted on p-net. Putting used engine oil on your boot is bad on many levels. There are lots of cleaner, more effective alternatives.
Lots of times when I have been splitting
or cutting fire wood out in the rain, and my leather gloves get a thourough soaking, I’ll squirt some thin weight motor oil or 3 in 1 oil on them when I am through, and they won’t harden up like they would if I just let them dry out.
My hands haven’t fallen off yet, and I am older then most of you.
Some of you need to see what the old farmers use as a preservative on their fence posts !
Jack L
beeswax is better
since many plastics and many rubber materials break down in oil.
Interestingly enough, I worked at a shop where our boots were constantly soaked in oil, and people constantly complained how the oil would wreck boots so quickly. Not to mention its poisonous, and if you don’t want to eat it, don’t put it on your skin.
Old farmers used DDT too.
It is not just a coincidence here that the area around sweet corn fields have a higher incidence of cancer.
leather stuff
http://www.huberds.com/
this stuff works and is relatively inexpensive. no one in their right mind would ever use used motor oil. what a crock.
steve
NikWax
like pikabike mentioned above, is great stuff. I won’t use snowseal. It has a silicon in it that plugs the pores in leather not letting it breathe. having used NikWax for years and very satisfactorily, I’m not spending $ on anything else.
DDT
– Last Updated: Jan-28-11 12:41 PM EST –
Last I heard, there still wasn't any evidence of human health problems directly attributable to DDT. I've been out of the loop for a several years regarding pesticide use and side effects, but during the years I was hearing about such things, DDT was still considered a very safe material, as far as mammanlian toxicity goes. I used to know a guy who ATE large quantities of DDT on a regular basis just for the shcok value it provided to those who assumed that the compound's environmental problems were equivalent to a known danger to humans (that guy lived well into his 90s, from what I heard). Anyway, regarding your broad statement about DDT and cancer, most farmers old enough to have been exposed to DDT are in retirement homes, so if there IS some high occurrance of cancer around sweet corn fields, it would make a whole lot more sense to attribute it to one of at least a dozen OTHER compounds applied in huge quanitities to sweet corn, NOT DDT which hasn't been used in decades.
I never simply "believe" someone who spouts info about cancer occurances along with statements of cause and effect. These things are notoriously difficult to determine and understand, and even some of the really carcinogenic compounds in the world don't result in increased risk for those with the greatest exposure. Usually the only place cause and effect can be determined is in the lab, using mega-doses of the material on specially bred, cancer-susceptible mice. It's only by extrapolation of data obtaind from these mega-doses that "dangerous exposure levels" are calculated. Most of the time this is NOT a topic that can be understood simply by observing cancer occurance in the population. In some cases that's possible, but those are exceptions. Besides, the whole topic of illnesses being clumped by location can easily be completely unrelated to the expected cause. This phenomenom is observed in nature all the time. This whole subject is the reason I really wish the subjects of science and statistics were taught at a higher level than that understandable by 4th graders in our public schools. A person who takes just ONE college-level statistics class applicable to life sciences would have their whole notion of determining cause and effect well and truly shattered, and that would be a good thing. Most people just have no clue, not even remotely close to having a clue, how difficult it is to isolate a genuine "cause" when dealing with things like cancer.
we used to go without clothing also
and live in caves, and not brush or floss our teeth. Life has moved on a bit since then.
As hazardous materials go, …
– Last Updated: Jan-28-11 3:30 PM EST –
... this doesn't sound too serious at all. Lots of relatively safe things we are exposed to in everyday life are at least this bad. Remember that risks, especially for cancer, are never overlooked even when cause-and-effect hasn't even been established. Wikipedia points out that cancer studies regarding DDT have been conflicting, and one statement about the risk is simply "reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen," based on the fact that some similar chemical compounds have some risk. That's a statement that is true of darned near every complex organic compound, at some dosage level.
I'm not saying that eating DDT, like that professor I used to know would do, is a wise thing to do, and I'm not even saying that careless exposure would be of no concern, but in the grand scheme of things, and in comparison to so much of the stuff we are all exposed to, the risk really doesn't sound too bad, as I interpret that article. Even the topic at hand, used motor oil, presents a greater cancer risk than DDT, and with all the mechanics out there, who's heard of them having a greater risk of cancer as a result? - I mean, an increased risk that can actually be "quanitified", rather than some story about "I know two mechanics with cancer".
That's my perspective. Loads of chemicals we deal with are more dangerous (to us, not necessarily other critters in the environment) than DDT, but limiting exposure in common-sense ways makes more sense to me than being afraid of every compound that has made headlines for some reason, or making damning statements about the same that don't take note of the overall context and risk of the chemicals in our world. In short, I believe in being careful but I don't easily get scared.
As a side-note, I think it wold be really interesting to tabulate the percentage of people who have been thoroughly doused in DDT powder, often many times, for control of lice, that ended up living to a ripe old age without any strange illnesses. Years ago, probably millions of people have had their bodies "turned white" with DDT powder for that reason, yet no clear cauase and effect for illness ever became apparent after that practice. Again, I'm not saying that means the stuff is safe, only that whatever risk there is is not so great that everyday observations can identify it.