The actual ingredients are literally on the safety data sheet: https://files.wd40.com/pdf/sds/mup/wd-40-multi-use-product-a...
The company can brag that their formulation has a special blend of herbs and spices, but someone who wants to can obviously make their own special formulation and say that theirs is secret too.
More importantly, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And there is nothing particularly special about WD-40's formulation anymore. WD-40 consistently performs worse than nearly any other available penetrating oil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUEob2oAKVs It's a terrible long term lubricant (because it's designed to evaporate, it actually concentrates gunk and grime).
WD-40 themselves have come out with improved "Specialist" formulations that mostly just copy other, superior products.
This is an oversimplification, in a way that is likely not obvious to a lot of people on this (software-focused) forum. An SDS does not have to list exact amounts, does not have to disclose some details of how an ingredient or mix of ingredients was processed, and (depending on jurisdiction) may not have to identify some "safe" ingredients at all. Some ingredients may be identified in relatively vague ways, that are sufficient for safety purposes but do not reveal the exact product. As the SDS you linked to says "The specific chemical identity and exact percentages are a trade secret". An SDS is certainly very helpful to reverse-engineering a product, but it doesn't tell you everything.
All that said, yes, the main strength of WD-40 is its marketing and ubiquity, and claims about its secrecy have more to do with marketing than anything practical.
Where I find this can be fun is that different countries seem to have different requirements for precision. Or just straight up different formulations for the same thing.
German wd40 says it’s all c9-c11 carbon chains:
https://smarthost.maedler.de/datenblaetter/EG_SIDA_WD40_EN.p...
US has a CARB and non-CARB formulation which are also different:
https://files.wd40.com/pdf/sds/mup/wd-40-multi-use-product-a...
https://files.wd40.com/msds/latam/GHS-SDS-WD-40-Multi-Use-Pr...
It's absolutely not a BOM to reproduce a product.
Depending on what the product is, this may still be a long way from the full "recipe" (or method) to recreate the product.
Although I must admin WD-40 helped me in the past opening an old door lock.
Not really applicable in an automotive lock which start out as hotdog down hallway when new and only expand from there.
Putting new fresh oil in it often temporarily fixes it because it dissolves some (or a lot) of the old varnish. Acetone can often do the same thing too, but can also wash the varnish deeper into the mechanism where it turns into really solid ‘plastic’ when the acetone dissolves.
Probably should replace the lock but it is so expensive.
NMR and gas chromatography to the rescue!
The people who use it are looking for cheap, mostly.
Source: farming. We have many different lubes and penetrating products for when we're in the actual shop, but in the field, nothing beats wd-40 for getting back to work fast, or unsticking some shit when all you have is a hammer and you just know when that fucking bolt comes loose it's going to throw rust and dirt all over your face.
Why? Used motor oil is, well, used. It contains metal particles from the engine and combustion byproducts, which is why it was replaced in the first place. Granted, most lubrication applications aren't the marvels of precision parts moving at high speed that a modern engine is so can probably make do with poorer oil, but still.
You can buy industrial lubricants in bulk for pretty cheap so that unless you use huge quantities of it, it shouldn't make much difference.
As an aside, my aunt's husband worked more or less his entire career in a heavy truck repair shop. And he had an oil burner heating his house (you can see where this is going, eh?). So he got used engine oil for free, the shop was happy to get rid of it as disposing of it properly cost money. I think burning used engine oil was illegal already back then due to the pollution, and nowadays I think they have some government mandated accounting system to ensure that the same amount of oil is sent to proper recycling as comes in.
Used engine oil isn't really suitable for lubricating an engine anymore but it's fine for a temporary lubricant of a drill bit, some random hinge on a gate, or stubborn bushing on a piece of equipment. Engine oil is only really replaced on an engine because at some point it degrades enough that things like oil film bearings in the crankshaft would start to fail. A bushing on something like a small dump trailer doesn't rotate at 2300 rpm.
Well, the corollary to that is that if it's just small case usage then if you buy a 1L bottle of some general purpose lubrication oil for, say, $5, then it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things that the price/L is a lot higher than if you buy an entire drum of the stuff. ;-)
> Used engine oil isn't really suitable for lubricating an engine anymore but it's fine for a temporary lubricant of a drill bit, some random hinge on a gate, or stubborn bushing on a piece of equipment. Engine oil is only really replaced on an engine because at some point it degrades enough that things like oil film bearings in the crankshaft would start to fail. A bushing on something like a small dump trailer doesn't rotate at 2300 rpm.
Fair enough. I guess I just don't see the benefit here vs just having some bottle of cheap unused lubricant. Except if used engine oil is the only thing you happen to have at hand.
I like Swiss army knives, but they collect lint and gunk from my pockets. I use WD-40 to dissolve gunk, and to drive out water after an ultrasonic bath, but I lubricate with the light machine oil used for barber's clippers.
It is really simple and there is no magic.
The name took off as a brand and completely different stuff from the 40th iteration of a Water Displacer formulation is being sold under it as well.
That's wrong. WD-40 is a literally a lubricant mixed with a solvent that makes it very fluid so it can enter small interstices, the solvent then evaporates quickly, leaving the lubricant in place.
There's not a lot of lubricant in there compared to a pure lubricant, because the solvent takes a significant share of the volume, but it's still a lubricant once the solvent dries up.
However, if you're looking to lubricate something and have it last for a reasonable time, then WD-40 is a poor choice. However, using WD-40 first to hopefully dissolve contaminants/rust and remove water and then after a quick wipe to remove excess, applying something better such as 3-in-1 or silicone grease etc is a good idea.
The clue is in the name - Water Displacement 40.
If you want a spray on penetrating lubricant, then GT-85 is usually better as it has PTFE included to better lubricate. It still won't last that long though as it'll only make a thin film.
Edit: I've just seen that WD-40 make mention of a bus driver in Asia using WD-40 to remove a python from his bus' under-carriage. If in doubt, spray it with WD-40.
“WD-40 is not a very good lubricant and you should almost always use something else” is a mouthful I guess, but their denial of reality over something so meaningless is always astounding to me.
This is the expected outcome.
And it seems like such a strange thing to become emotionally attached to. But these people will sooner die then admit the thing that says it is a lubricant is a lubricant.
Why do you believe this? The vast majority of people commenting on the internet haven't used WD-40 in the past year. Why wouldn't they end up believing a wrong thing that has been confidently stated that they otherwise know nothing about?
People have always loved these factoids, long long before the internet. It was common conversation fodder for upper class folks in history to repeat outright falsehoods as "um actually"s or "You should know"s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions_...
Do you know how many people for whatever reason believe that Columbus believed the earth was round and everyone else thought it was flat, despite all historical evidence being contrary?
Basically "Common consensus is X but I'm super smart and know REAL truth Y" is like the optimal meme shape for the human brain. The biases in our brain will always support such an argument shape, and humans get a reward for relaying that info, correct or not. All our innate and fundamental physiological biases will be triggered by this kind of statement.
IMO the super interesting aspect is the second and third generations of "Um actually" where a previous "um actually" gets further "um actually!"d, and even that gets "um actuallyyyyy"d. I wonder if we will get a cycle at some point!
It is a mixture of a lubricant and a solvent. And once the solvent evaporates, only the lubricant remains.
That’s how I would describe the original and most common WD-40 formula: a passable short-term lubricant for quick and dirty jobs, but not a long-term high quality lubricant, like, say, 3-in-1 (graphite) or silicone lubricants.
Adding to the confusion is that WD-40 sells a silicone lubricant that is a much better lubricant for many purposes than the original formula.
(Yes, you can buy bulk wd-40 liquid and put into a branded or unbranded sprayer)
Clean motor oil is not actually that harmful if swallowed - it only carcinogenic because of all the metals and carbon it builds up when in the motor.
Used, not clean.
If it doesn't move and it should: WD-40
The video’s test showed wd-40 worked slightly better than kroil and pb blaster, which all performed in the same range, being not much better than nothing. That’s particularly interesting because of how often kroil/pb come up as recommendations to use instead of wd…
Acetone+atf did better and liquid wrench penetrating fluid did the best, but *nothing* beats heat.
Regardless, the main problem with WD-40 is the popular misconception that it's a decent lubricant.
Home Depot is such a wasteland. One shit brand of every product, and that's it. Row upon row of worthless, crumbly Dap wood filler, for example.
I went there and asked three employees, probably separated in age by a decade each, for household oil. It's as if they didn't even understand the words. We're talking about 20- to 40- or 50-year-old HD employees who don't know WTF 3-in-1 oil is. Incredible.
From the data sheet: "The specific chemical identity and exact percentages are a trade secret."
The petroleum base oils alone cover thousands of candidate chemicals.
And even if it were, the recipe was supposedly created by a guy in his shed after only 40 attempts with the technology available 70 years ago. The idea that an R&D team with an entire lab of equipment couldn't recreate or improve the formula if they wanted to in that time seems a bit far fetched.
Formulation matters and is very important.
A1 jet fuel, propane, regular 87 gas and vaseline are four different formulations of some version of mineral oil (petroleum).
Which do you want in a car you are driving? On your parched lips? In your plane engine? Coming into your kitchen stove?
The only CAS number listed in that data sheet that doesn’t return Molecular Formula: Unspecified is carbon dioxide. The other 98% of the formulation is just sort of vague references to petroleum distillates.
- LVP Aliphatic Hydrocarbon (CAS #64742-47-8) 45-50%
- Petroleum Base Oil (CAS #64742-56-9, 65-0, 53-6, 54-7, 71-8) <35%
- Aliphatic Hydrocarbon (CAS #64742-47-8) 10 - <25%
- Carbon Dioxide (CAS #124-38-9) 2-3%
Note: The specific chemical identity and exact percentages are a trade secret.
> specific chemical identity
I wonder if it's just two hydrocarbons then? Odd that identify is singular.
Hydrocarbons are rather well studied.
Yep, and equally obvious is that keeping some piece of paper in a bank vault for PR doesn't change the fact the "secret" formula still needs to be turned into millions of gallons of product in factories around the world, so people in supply chain procurement and manufacturing processes have to have practical knowledge of how to make it.
Iirc WD-40 = Water Displacement, formula #40
It was originally designed to displace water for corrosion resistance and cleaning. (Edit I think it was originally used for de-icing in an aerospace context?) You probably will never need a single can of WD-40 in your life. Try PB Blaster or Liquid Wrench!
In the corollary of the hammer/nail thing, when what you have are 205-litre barrels of Rotella, everything that needs oil gets a dose of it.
Petroleum oils aren't really good for hinges (which I assume is what is squeaking) for a variety of reasons. If you use wd-40, you find that the squeak goes away and quickly returns, sometimes worse. The reason for this is that WD-40 will wash out any grease or oil in the hinge as well as attract whatever dirt or dust is around, both worsening the squeak.
3-in-1 (in the dropper can) is a good, effective lubricant but it has an important drawback that is shares with WD-40, it will wash out any grease already in there as well as attract dirt. 3-in-1 (tin dropper bottle) is great for light mechanical duty like a bike chain or as cutting oil and even some gears, but it wont work well as a deck lube, way oil, or hinge grease because of its very light weight.
Here's a brand and type that I recommend for doors. CRC is an excellent source of this type of chemical, and my personal go-to. https://www.crcindustries.com/white-lithium-grease-10-wt-oz-...
Lithium grease (sometimes called White Grease) is excellent for door hinges because it is dry, wont drop, will spread instead of being pushed out like oil (even 3-in-one), and lasts forever. Since its pretty dang thick and not really a liquid even in the spray version, it also wont drip onto your carpet as readily while you apply it. Get the spray version, protect the paint behind the hinge with a towel or a piece of printer paper(TIP: Cut the paper %85 of the way in half long-way (hotdog fold) and slide the paper over the hinge as you spray it with the door closed and from a bit of an angle, pay more attention to the top part, just under the head of the hinge pin. That should be more than enough. Spray-on oil would soak the paper, lithium grease won't so this is another benefit of lithium)) and give it a couple squirts while working the door. Wipe the excess off and enjoy years of squeak-free operation!
It is perfect for light-duty applications where the lube sticking to its lubricating point is important. White Lithium Grease is [Edit, its Lithium soap? whatever that is.] and mineral oil, sticks to metal excellent, and is compatible with almost all bushing rubber.
—
More (Gratuitous) Suggestions from the WD-40© Corporation:
Use Lithium grease in applications like lubricating your car's hood latch. Spray on WD-40© liberally to clean off any junk in the car hood latch/catch, clean with a rag as best you can, and after it dries, spray the mechanism with White Lithium Grease.
If your garage door chatters in its track channels, wipe the dust and debris from the channel after cleaning with WD-40© and after its dry, slather some Lithium Grease paste on the inside of the tracks. You can also apply a slight excess of Lithium Grease to the springs in the garage door to quiet the rattle and twanging.
If you have a squeaky rubber bushing in some shop equipment like a press, lift, or clamp; If you have any slowing or binding plastic-on-plastic part movement like in a drawer or lid, a dab of Lithium grease will quiet, lubricate, and protect plastic, metal rubber and such materials while not deteriorating them like a petroleum based lubricant would. Lithium grease is also water retardant, but not water proof! Make sure to not apply Lithium Grease to any metal which isn't BONE DRY! If you have a damp part, WD-40© is a perfect tool to clean and dry your part before lubrication.
You can also literally just spray a rubber or plastic part with Lithium Grease (or just silicone oil, which is cleaner and much better for rubber and plastics but IMPOSSIBLE to clean, so DO NOT SPILL and wear gloves. Seriously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30286616 ) to protect/shine them up. It will work totally well on your tires, but I don't like that idea because it might fling onto your paint or transfer to your rotor if you touch it while swapping wheels. Seems it might work well to prevent dry-rot during storage, now that I think about it. I feel like basically nobody does this though.
Thank you for this opportunity. I had a lot of fun thinking about one of my favorite lubricants, which is of course silicone, and I expect that it will add much value to your life!
—
[edit: all the references to WD-40© in the More Suggestions part are true, but also jokes used to illustrate the marketing genius of WD-40©. You don't need it, and there's a decent chance that what you're about to spray it on will only get worse, but yeah, it does work really well. I also just think its pretty funny to have a can of WD-40© while knowing its true purpose, so that when some jerk like me comes along with his or her "AKTUALLY, WD-40© is a solvent not a lubricant!" you will then be free to utilize whichever form of verbal jui-jitsu you desire in dispatchment of this interloper as you reply, "Yeah! I use it every day … !"]
Take the can of WD-40© out of your hand and replace it with the can of CRC© White Lithium Grease. All subsequent steps are the same.
I would then hide your screwdrivers so you don't disassemble anything. Just spray it with lube. :)
I recently read that WD40 isn't actually a lubricant but a lubricant remover. So as you write you'd use it to remove gunk but then follow it up with an actual lubricant.
On the last two bottles of WD40 I came across (im Germany) I checked the back and it indeed said that it's not a lubricant but a lubricant remover.
(Disclaimer: can't read the article past the intro where it does call it a lubricant...)
We all know that there is something better for the job than WD-40, its value comes from its convenience, affordability, availability, brand recognition, and the number of cases where it is "good enough".
The "specialist" brand is what its name imply, specialist products, all of them better for a specific application, but none of them as universal as the original. The original formulation is not magic, but it is the one we are familiar with and it works well enough when you don't have anything better for your specific job.
But yea, like Coke or McDonalds, the brand is probably worth far more than the secrecy of the recipe.
Lanolin based coatings (fluid film, et al) don't have this issue.
Of course, i live in a super-humid place these days, so i have to control humidity anyway. This doesn't stop rust, but it means i can worry a lot less about which coatings and how often.
Difference being, they applied it every day, and specifically to prevent rust because the tools were wet. But man did they love it. Went through a couple cans per week I bet.
I use it a ton to clean off threads of stuff exposed to the elements. Get dirt, old oil/grease, water, and any grit or rust or other things out of threads so they tighten properly and don't get jammed up with stuff.
If something I'm working on is dirty, it gets a spray of WD-40 and a rag to help not foul up the inside of whatever I'm opening.
Forty miles from my destination, it seized. Sadly, not knowing it was reverse thread, I stripped it with a breaker bar and had to have the truck towed.
As you say, there are much better lubricants out there.
(I know WD-40 is a bad lubricant, that's what makes this so funny)
I would expect WD-40 to work fairly well because it cleans the chain and gets the filth out of the links, filth is a big part of drive train wear and we really don't need much in the way of lube as long as things are kept clean and rust free so the links move smoothly.
That it does, but it doesn't leave much lubricant behind, which you need for a properly functioning chain. As you know, you want something that will get between the pins and rollers and stay there, minus the grime that would turn it into grinding paste. Which is probably why some people swear by wax, but that sounds like a giant hassle.
Wax is up there with PTFE for making grinding paste in my experience, especially on long, hot, wax softening rides.
Wear appears to be down too. The reduction in grease and dirty chain makes is so nice.
Wax holds up quite well against water but does hold grit and tends to deposit it on chainrings, sprockets, and pulleys, and it wears them quicker than 3in1 will. Wax shares the downside of PTFE, you need to clean off the old before applying more or things start wearing fast, which is not an issue for everyone. It is nice and clean.
Here in the winter of northern Minnesota, one good snowy ride with the road salt and sand will strip wax. Not that you would want to use wax in this sort of cold even if the road salt and sand were not an issue, wax gets stiff and brittle in the sorts of cold we get. I am an everyday rider and bike is my mode of transportation for everything, in this climate I need ease of reapplication or I will be replacing chainrings yearly.
What sort of temperature are you getting down to? Any special gear needed for you or the bike?
Here it’s never below about 5C and maxes at about 30C. It’s mild. The rain is the only thing that can be a lot. The most was about 250mm in a day, which is exceptional, but sudden, very downpours are common.
Gear has mostly been a move away from cartridge bearings, you are lucky if those will last the winter. Old fashioned cup and cone bearings hold enough grease to get you through most winters without having to repack. For the messy and icy weather I try to ride my fixed gear, does not matter if the brakes freeze up, very simple drive train (single piece crank!) I can just ignore all winter other than oil the chain and its 1/8" chain sucks up a lot more oil than the skinny 10+ speed chains and sheds filth much better as well. 3in1 helps a lot as well, it is pretty good about shedding filth. For the brutal cold, when things are dry and for most errands it is generally my touring bike, its granny gear is nice when the grease starts to thicken in the cold and high rpm pedaling does a good job of keeping you warm but keeping the derailers working well even with friction shifters can be a chore.
Only specialty gear I have is studded BMX pedals, they do a great job of keeping your feet on the pedals and are footwear agnostic. Not the best pedal choice for a fixed gear, they can really shred your shins.
What sort of distances are you doing?
I work at a couple of locations that are about 9-15km from home.
I’m probably doing 150-300km per week, depending on weather. Even doing 5km in the conditions you describe sounds Herculean.
It is not as bad as most people think as long as you get out there everyday and avoid getting in the habit of not doing stuff because it is too cold. That first -10 day is brutal but that -10 is not so bad after a -20 day and feels almost warm after -30. So I convince myself that a beer would taste really good and bike to the bar in -30 just to get out there because the longer you go without riding in that sort of cold the harder it is to get back out there, do it daily and it is easy to remember that it is just a minor discomfort until you get the blood flowing.
You're not supposed to use it (and similar products) like that tho. You're supposed to use it to flush out the gunk and grime by dissolving it, all it is supposed to do is to make stuff that doesn't move, move, enough to fix it now and maybe prepare a bit for putting proper lubricant.
Like, it's not fault of their formula that people are using it wrong
Same deal here: there is value to having a product that stops squeaks, cleans rust and de-goo's gunk on the supermarket shelf. 70% of the time, snobbery is just snobbery. The world runs on Getting Stuff Done.
If I accidentally leave some pliers or my socket set out in the rain, I soak them with WD-40, scrub off the rust with a wire brush, and wipe off the excess with a towel. It does a decent job of preventing further damage. If I have some rusty parts sometimes I'll throw them in a glass jar, soak 'em with WD-40, shake them around, let them sit for a day or so, and then scrub them with a wire brush. Gets most of the rust off.
If you want a lubricant, just buy the correct one for the job. Silicone oil, lithium grease, graphite, all will do a better job in the long run than WD-40 if you use them in their intended role. My goto "universal lube" personally is "Super Lube", a PTFE-based lubricant which is NSF rated for incidental contact with food and dielectric.
I've started using M-Pro 7 gun oil for the same tasks. Not that it solves world hunger or anything, by I always have some around, I don't end up smelling volatile organics for the rest of the day.
Best smelling shop liquid I've yet encountered is Marvel Mystery Oil. It's amazing.
When I was a kid some family friends used WD40 on their joints - arthritic knees and such. Church friends, actually, which I mention only because stuff like that probably helped me reject the religion as readily as I did.
A web search for "WD40 arthritis" shows that there are still people doing this.
You mean they got this suggestion from a priest? Or what's the connection?
But since I did, lemme clarify, it was a pretty out-there fundamentalist church that I'm glad to have escaped early, and my comment is just that seeing people there do stuff that I couldn't make sense of, even totally unrelated stuff like this, probably helped undermine any sense of authority they had in my mind.
I use WD-40 exclusively as the lube to mount rubber tires onto wheels. I've found it's the best choice for that task. The wax paste tire lube is inferior. I'm just reaching for the WD-40 anyway to remove the wax paste residue on the wheel rim.
The Carthusian monks who produce Chartreuse (a collection of herbal liqueurs popular for use in cocktails) have been producing it and protecting the secret 130 ingredient recipe for over 400 years successfully. At any given time no more than three of the monks hold the entire recipe, and yet they have a company they have formed to execute most of the production without the secret being leaked.
The designated monks coordinate production and are involved in QC, as well as developing new blends for special releases, but much production is done by paid employees who do not know the complete recipe.
Presumably the recipe relies on very unique and location-specific herbs to the alps. Part of the justification for limiting supply is concern for the environment and sustainability of their production. The order also had to cease production while they were evicted.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the key ingredients weren't wild foraged or at least very unique species.
One of the greatest use cases of security by obscurity, specially if part of the ingredients are decoys.
A few years ago I (not a specialist!) made lots of batches of OpenCola, which is based partly on the original Pemberton recipe, and it comes so close that nobody could realistically tell the difference. If anything, it tastes better, because I imagine Coke doesn't use fresh, expensive essential oils (like neroli) for everything.
The tricky piece that nobody else can do is the caffeine (edit: de-cocainized coca leaf extract) derived from coca leaves. Only Coke has the license to do this, and from what I gather, a tiny, tiny bit of the flavour does come from that.
I've not participated in Cola tasting, but assuming fresher tastes better isn't really a safe assumption. Lots of ingredients taste better or are better suited for recipies when they're aged. I've got pet chickens and their eggs are great, but you have to let them sit for many days if you want to hard boil them, and I'd guess baking with them may be tricky for sensitive recipies.
Anyway, even if it does taste better for whatever that means, that's not meeting the goal of tasting consistently the same as Coke, in whichever form. If you can't tell me if it's supposed to taste like Coke from a can, glass bottle, plastic bottle, or fountain, then you've told me all I need to know about how close you've replicated it.
And by fresh I do mean: The OpenCola is full of natural essential oils (orange, neroli, cinnamon, lime, lavender, lemon, nutmeg), and real natural flavor oils have a certain potent freshness you don't get in a mass-produced product.
But you are trying to reproduce a mass-produced product.
Coca leaves contain various alkaloids, but not caffeine. Coca Cola gets its caffeine from (traditionally) kola nuts, and (today, presumedly) the usual industrial sources.
I did my OpenCola experiment in the company office together with a colleague, and we ended up hooking it up to a beer tap, with a canister of CO2. I'm proud to say the whole office really got into it.
You write code for a certain part/spec that could go on a number of things (missle, airplane, etc). You dont know if your code will be used in a missile or not.
He mentions that the ingredients are shipped unlabeled from different facilities who don't know what they're making.
He then goes on to reverse engineer the formula. Because science.
The mixing, again, spreading it out, have factory A mix ingredients x, y, and z, factory B mix ingredients Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and factory C mix factory A and B's mixtures.
Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola (It Took Me A Year) by LabCoatz https://youtu.be/TDkH3EbWTYc
Perfectly Replicating Coca Cola [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543509 - Jan 2026 (219 comments)
He did find a pretty good substitute for the primary cocoa leaf ingredient though. Also, what he made was virtually indistinguishable in the taste tests. One person said that his tasted closer to the 2L of coke than the can of coke did, which suggests the final bit could just be carbonation level of the soda stream.
My theory was that the carbonation was perfect and the product was fresher, as the bottler requires rabbinical supervision and they probably make it for a limited run.
Which tastes different from pure fructose. If you want to taste them side by side, you can absolutely tell the difference. (If you've done any endurance sports, you know what I mean.)
Once digested I agree that the health effects are suspect. But tastewise, fructose, sucrose and glucose are distinct.
Are you perhaps thinking that "high fructose corn syrup" is predominantly fructose? The name is confusing, but it actually means that it is high in fructose relative to normal corn syrup, not that fructose predominates. HFCS is usually pretty close to 50:50 fructose to glucose, just like sucrose is:
How much fructose is in HFCS?
The most common forms of HFCS contain either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, as described in the Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR 184.1866), and these are referred to in the industry as HFCS 42 and HFCS 55. The rest of the HFCS is glucose and water. HFCS 42 is mainly used in processed foods, cereals, baked goods, and some beverages. HFCS 55 is used primarily in soft drinks.
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/high-fruct...
While you can measure the difference between 55:45 and 50:50, I'm doubtful the taste difference is much.
Even with the standard fountain formulation, there is a different/better flavor at McDonald's because of the standards they apply to each part of the supply chain. In a few weeks, depending on where you live, there will be two liter bottles of coke with a yellow cap. That's kosher for passover -- try it.
Reality is you’d want to make something with similar physical characteristics and call it a day. Kinda like how we don’t bother with hplc on gasoline, you just fill your car with something that meets the specs and get on with life
kerosene
But yes, I strongly suspect a motivated party could use analytical chemistry to work it out.
Not worth much.
Can't read the paywalled article, but Water Displacement formula 40 seemed to be the best of the formulas for being a lubricant.
Ever-lasting PFAS for the win!
But I'd still never pay for it.
Canola oil works in practice for basic tasks, but requires routine reapplication.
> Canola oil works super well in practice without any of these risks.
I cannot advise enough against using canola oil for most lubrication purposes. It's biodegradable and will break down (good for some applications) but for the most part oil breaking down is a bad thing if you want to keep something well maintained. It would gum up over time, start reacting chemically with dust or other chemicals, and potentially even cause damage. Especially if you lubricate to prevent rust.
Also, in the context of breaking loose bolts, oil alone doesn't have any capacity to break up or penetrate rust.
Spray on white lithium grease works for most "architectural" or furniture uses (ex: door hinges, gas springs on chairs, garage door rails and chain, etc).
For anything constantly moving (ex: gearboxes or bearings) you want a more viscous lithium grease (ex: red n tacky or lucas xtra/green).
But in pretty much every situation (on land) you want to be using a form of lithium grease if you want to actually keep the interface lubricated.
From childhood experience, thinking all oils were the same, absolutely not. It goes rancid and gums up after some time.
It's essentially a mixture of mineral spirits and oil. Used as a lubricant, the mineral spirits evaporate, leaving the oil behind. It might be enough oil to keep a mechanism working for a while, or it might not be.
It's a "water displacer." Oil displaces water, who knew?
It comes in a spray can, so you can get it into things like a bike shift lever. And you can get the over-spray on things like the garage floor.
Bicyclists tend to get really worked up about WD-40.
Unless they have own refining facility, and it is more like a recipe of temperatures/pressures.
WD-40 is great for machining aluminum, cleaning grease/other oils, and if you want a mild temporary lubricant not something that will make a massive mess or irritate your skin.
I've long thought that every restaurant/bakery/etc could publish their full internal cookbooks and not see a drop in sales. People don't buy it because they are incapable (or think they are) of making something, they do it because it's faster, they don't have all the ingredients, they don't have the time, they don't have the skill, the list goes on. I bet I could give the instructions, the equipment, and the ingredients to people and they'd still choose to buy it. Sure, you might lose a tiny bit of sales to "home bakers" [0] but I think it'd be eclipsed by people that saw/read/heard about the cookbook (maybe never even saw it) and that was enough "marketing" to get them in the door.
I've always found "secret knowledge" to be a little silly. A sort of, security through obscurity. Knowing a recipe doesn't make you special, being able to build/run a company around it and make it consistently good does.
[0] I love to cook, I sometimes like making copy-cat recipes. I cannot think of a copy-cat recipe that I made more than 2-3 times. While it's fun to do, it's never exactly the same, and I also believe that "food tastes better when someone else makes it". Also it can sometimes be just-as or more expensive to make some food items due to needing a bunch of ingredients that they don't sell in exactly the quantity the recipe calls for.
Makes me think of all those stories[0] employing a "secret recipe" plot. Some baking/cooking recipe (or a whole cookbook), written down by grandma and passed down in the family, or such, is critical to the fate of a bakery/restaurant/Thanksgiving dinner/etc.; predictably, it gets stolen, and suddenly the meal everyone loves cannot be made anymore.
It's a dumb idea if you think about it for more than a second - even the worst home cook will naturally memorize all the ingredients and steps after using the recipe more than couple times. If the process involves more than one person, there's bound to be copies and derivative documents (e.g. shopping lists) around, too. Recipes are good checklists and are particularly helpful when onboarding new cooks, but losing an actively used one isn't a big deal - it can be recreated on the spot by those who already know it by heart.
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[0] - One I've watched recently was Hoodwinked! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodwinked!. Great movie, but out of all the absurdities in it, by far the biggest one was the whole "stealing recipes to put bakeries out of business" plot driver.
I really feel main difference is the scale and then getting right ingredients and then actually using all of them. Later making thing somewhat cost effective.
I have no doubt any serious company couldn't make something like WD-40. Not exactly same stuff, but in general close enough. Probably close enough that if you labeled over nearly all users would not notice.
Absolutely. Chad Robertson of Tartine bakery has written books detailing how to make their breads and pastries. Still lines out the door.
Mineral oil
Decane
Nonane
Tridecane and Undecane
Tetradecane
Dimethyl Naphthalene
Cyclohexane
Carbon Dioxide"
Relevant video on someone reverse engineering the formula for coca cola
I think it’s okay to share the gift link as canonical. It’s the usual practice of sharing articles from LWN here, for example.
There is no scarcity of the products. Capital, means of production, labor and innovation are all abundant now.
The most valuable thing now is access to customers. We should demand a lot from the business for the privilege of having access to customers. A lot more than we do now.
The whole point of “the 40th formula” and this nonsense is fooling customers to keep buying a commodity
Fuck me, these people get paid millions just for existing and they don’t have a clue what they’re doing.
Rust prevention: marginal. Use proper coatings or a flash rust prevention compound that sticks around.
Penetrating oil: terrible. Use 1:1 acetone:ATF instead.
Toxicity: terrible. It's petroleum distillates.
It's popular only because of missile hype and marketing, but that doesn't mean it's any good.
Silicone-based lubricants persist in contact with rubber. Water or soap and water is safer and cheaper for rubber hoses for manipulation.
Just don't make the mistake of routinely inhaling or dipping one's hands in toxic compounds like MEK, carbon tet, TCE, and gasoline+TEL that my dad or grandpa did cumulatively because some of the cancers and other conductions are awful yet avoidable. Petroleum distillates are literally petrochem shit.
In other news, WD-40 is not a lubricant.
That makes it the "best" for a lot of "anything works" applications.
oh right, it also seems to leave a gummy residue, which is really not great for machine tools
Not the parent comment, but sometimes comments are so outrageous it makes me laugh.
Like what else do you even want at that point?
Source that you can put gas in your car? That pop tarts are food? Like yes, it's advertised as food, I can tell it's food, I've eaten it - but where is your source for it being food other than all that?
https://www.wd40.com/myths-legends-fun-facts/
Myth: WD-40 Multi-Use Product is not really a lubricant.
Fact: While the “W-D” in WD-40 stands for Water Displacement, WD-40 Multi-Use Product is a unique, special blend of lubricants. The product’s formulation also contains anti-corrosion agents and ingredients for penetration, water displacement and soil removal.
How does the author of that fun facts page know this for sure? I just heard that only executives get to see the ingredient list. Is this fun fact author an executive?
Anyone who actually use wd40 will eventually notice it not only has poor ability to stick around under load, but also likes to oxidize, forming a varnish or horrible goo depending on how thick it was left on. While this doesn’t matter (or is even desirable) for loosening a bolt, it’s a poor choice on tools, hinges, etc.
If long term lubrication is needed, then people should just use an appropriate grease or a non-oxidating* oil meant for staying around and lubricating.
*Plant based oils generally contain high amounts of polyunsaturated fats, which love to oxidize. Great for seasoning cast iron, but bad for other things. The goo/lacquer you get on kitchen pans and around the oven is oxidized fats linking together. There are rare exceptions to plant based oils being a bad idea for lubrication, involving genetic modification to produce mostly monounsaturated fats and further processing, like with alg’s “go juice”.
It also makes a superb bug killer, especially in combination with a barbecue lighter.
See their old school ad campaign
> Do you have tight nuts or a rusty tool? [0]
[0] https://thedutchluthier.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/tight-nuts-...
Are you absolutely, positively kidding me?