woodstove polish

[woodmills1]

or really how not to polish your wood stove.  my wife read that mineral oil was good for cleaning and polishing cast iron, so she polised our woodstove.  as i speak the windows are open and the fans are driving the smoke outdoors. anyone know if inhaled mineral oil fumes are toxic.

[Tom]

  I don't think so, at least not one evening of it.  I'll bet that tip came from an antique dealer not someone who actually uses the stove for what it was intended.   Our hadware store carries Flat Black Stove Paint that most everyone around here uses to spiff it up.  It is  heat resistant and looks pretty good for a long time.

She and I must think alike. I do stuff like that too.  

[Don P]

Well ya know I've vaguely wondered for some time just how one squeezes oil out of minerals anyhow, what is mineral oil?
Oh, and yup we've sat in the cold with the windows open on more than one occasion. In the winter we keep both the upstairs Master bedroom made up and the downstairs guest bedroom as well, not necessarily for company but for when one of us comes in cold and throws on a nuclear amount of stovewood and the house is still at 90 degrees at bedtime.

[Texas Ranger]

Reminds me of a story.  A local custom is to start a fire place fire with lighter pine (fat pine, Georgia fire starter, what ever, the resin impregnated core of southern pines). Now the use of the lighter pine is a chunk about the size of a couple of #2 pencils to start your dry kindling.  A new family moved in and a neighbor provided them with fire wood, and a supply of fat pine.  The wife, not being from the south, loaded the fire place  up with the fat pine and lit it off.  

The fire department was there in about 15 minutes, and the chimney fire was spectacular, sort of like an atlas rocket in reverse.

[CHARLIE]

ALERT***ALERT***ALERT***ALERT***ALERT***ALERT***

Woodmills1, run to the store and get lots of Toilet Paper. You're gonna need it.  Mineral Oil is a LAXATIVE!:o  Now that you've breathed all that laxative smoke, you and your wife and yore chilluns are gonna need plenty of TP! Keep the pets outdoors for awhile too!  

[woodmills1]

sure have had to go alot:Dbut nothin comes out but smoke
MINERAL OIL
MSDS Number: M7700 --- Effective Date: 02/25/99

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Product Identification
Synonyms: Paraffin oil; liquid petrolatum; White Mineral Oil; Nujol
CAS No.: 8012-95-1
Molecular Weight: Not applicable.
Chemical Formula: Not applicable.
Product Codes:
J.T. Baker: 2705
Mallinckrodt: 6357, 6358
                                                                            Potential Health Effects
----------------------------------

Inhalation:
Causes irritation to the respiratory tract. Symptoms may include coughing, shortness of breath. Inhalation of mist or vapor may produce aspiration pneumonia.

First Aid Measures
Inhalation:
Remove to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen. Get medical attention.

[Tom]

I guess sthe Government can make a crisis out of anyhing.  Not that they are wrong you undestand.

Mineral oil, AKA baby oil, has been a "medicine", paint thinner and "cleaner-upper-liquid" for as long as I can remember. Used in its liquid form on turned bowls because it is not poison.  The fumes couldn't be much worse than a burning candle(s).  Perhaps the warning is a 'just in case" scenario.  Perhaps the fumes of burnt oil may be worse, but I've never heard of anyone having a crisis because of mineral oil except that they took 3 tablespoons 'stead of one.

I'd sure like to see some case histories.

[Don P]

Whoopee! its layte in da day but I learned sumthin new (Jefferson also said "No word should be so poor as to only be able to be spelled one way") The old FS recipe for wood preservative called for paraffin oil but I never knew what that was.
Its been a standby in bowls and such because unlike veggie oil it doesn't go rancid.

OK, but whats it made out of?

[Jeff]

(Jefferson also said "No word should be so poor as to only be able to be spelled one way")

Why do you think they called him Jeff   erson?

[woodmills1]

Don,  I am pretty sure that mineral oil is one of the products refined from the fractional distillation of crude oil.  i searched a few sites about petroleum refining but have not yet found one that specificially stated mineral oil.

[L. Wakefield]

   From THE MERCK INDEX; mineral oil= liquid paraffin= liquid petrolatum (and other synonyms); 'a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons from pertoleum'.  It gives various characteristics of denstiy, solubility, and toxicity. It doesn't say the specific length chain of hydrocarbon- but it does specifiy 'a mixture'. I'm guessing it's longer chain than diesel or #2 fuel oil just based on the viscosity. I've never checked out what the ignition temp is.  It wouldn't be any better to breathe than any of the other hydrocarbons burning with a smoky flame.  lw

[Tom]

Maybe that's what my problem is.  My Momma lathed that mineral oil/diesel oil on my bare behind when I was a baby and poured it in my mouth when I was 10.  

My wife won't let me in the house when I've been on the tractor or running the mill because "you smell like diesel".

I've been poisoned !!  I've been fed tractor fuel !!

It's those chains...I know it is......     I was always told I had lead in my A** but I'll bet its been those long chains all this time.

Got a real problem...I put it on my boys too.  That might explain a lot........hmmm...never smoked any of it though... :-/

[L. Wakefield]

   'They' say it isn't absorbed thru the skin. The aromatherapy and other folks claim it actually leaches vitamins and oils OUT of your skin- I'm not sure I buy that. Same claim made by the folks who sell it about the internal use- it's not absorbed, just passes thru- but it could theoretically absorb stuff on its way throuh there too, tho I hadn't heard that argued. It actually makes more sense since it passes through with a significant transit time and there IS a lot of stuff within the gut- some useful, some not (oh, you DON'T want to know the bizarre 'far side' imagery I'm getting with THAT one). But when you start talking about partial combustion, whether you are actually producing an open flame, or just smoke- you have changed the molecular structure- and then if you breathe it you are exposing a different part of the body to the effects. Any hydrocarbon is bad news for the lungs. You are more apt to read about it in terms of gasoline or others where it is being swallowed or vomited and then breathed in, resulting in 'aspiration pneumonia'. But the smoke has to be bad too. if I get anything more specific I'll pass it on. Information, I mean, not those weird things to be found within the gut  lw

[Tom]

One of my oldtimers has a Dr. son who is into forensics up in georgia.  Now and again he comes up with an eye opener on gut treasures.  Pretty interesting stuff.

[Don P]

And there I was thinking Tom's mom gave it to him FOR partial combustion problems.

Thanks for the info on the source, its also the trans/hydraulic oil in my old Fergie, straight mineral 80 wt.

As long as I'm asking dead dinosaur questions, what is distillate? Have heard the old timers use the term but its just another one of those mysteries. From the context I think its an even worse stove polish.

[Tom]

A distillate is what comes off of a concoction in steam at certain temperatures that can be reconstituted into liquid again.   like bourbon, rye, vodka, corn likker, rum, brandy, gasoline, and pure water.  That's why they Distill in a Distillery.

[woodmills1]

distillate- when you try and try to be on time but di   still late

[Don P]

Yes, but they were using it as a specific hydrocarbon eg. "A little distillate would really get that fire going". I'm thinking its an old term for diesel?

Oh, I did the same fatwood fire thing to a trashburner stove one time. I had been saving lighter wood at my cutting bench at work in a box and carried it up to our little 8x12 cabin that weekend. It was cold when we got there and to get it warmed up in a hurry I threw a very liberal handfull into the mix. The stove started to dance and puff then blew the door across the room.  Didn't really warm us up all that quick since we had to air the place out and fix the stove.