Uses for old motor oil, etc

We use it on all exposed wood around the barn instead of paint. It makes plain wood last twice as long as commercially treated wood.

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Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Mt.35:24

CLEANING USED ENGINE OIL

In hard times in the past, many people have cleaned their own engine oil so their internal combustion engines would not wear out from the use of old, dirty oil. Because it is a simple process to do, and may be necessary in the future, I will give you that information now. Once implanted in your mind you will never forget this process.

Engine oil does not wear out. It becomes contaminated with grit and combustion residue, and the additives for detergent action and anti-foaming dissipate. Cleaned oil will also lack those additives, but if used at a ratio of 3 quarts of cleaned oil and one quart of new oil, sufficient additives will be present to work while also stretching your supply of new engine oil.

The concept of cleaning used engine oil is based on the capillary action of natural fibers and siphoning which is gravity assisted. A clean natural fiber rope (cotton, hemp, sisal, etc) contains hollow fibers. When oil passes through the cell walls of the fibers the contaminants are trapped in the cells, while the oil passes through readily. A half-inch thick cotton rope about 3 1/2 feet long is best: anything else will work, but slows the process considerably. The trick is to get the oil to go through the rope all by itself, and that is where we use both the capillary action of the fibers and gravity to our advantage.
The typical system is to use two 1-gallon glass containers, like used wine jugs (A visit to your local "waste disposal" or recycling site, a little pilfering, and a trip to confession usually does the trick.) One of the bottles holds the used oil -- the other one will receive the cleaned oil.

Now that you have the bottles you will know how tall they are, so a rack must be built. One side of the rack will have a shelf high enough so that the bottom of one bottle is at the same height as the top of the other one. Just about anything strong enough to hold the bottles securely will work, so this is not a complicated procedure.

Then the bottle full of used oil is put on the top shelf, the empty one on the lower shelf, side by side, and the ends of the rope placed down to the bottom of each bottle. The rope must form a nice hoop from one bottle to the other, not touching the top of either bottle. If necessary, straight pins may be used to hold the rope in the middle of the bottle openings, but the rope must not be pinched. (It is less messy to get the length of rope and the exact placement of the bottles set before filling one with oil.)

The oil will climb up the rope by capillary action, through the loop, then start down toward the empty bottle. As the oil level passes the bottom of the upper bottle, gravity will begin to take effect and the oil will start flowing faster -- still slow, but faster. After a couple of weeks almost all of the oil will be in the lower bottle -- and clean!

Now for the "fly in the ointment." As this process takes several weeks at a minimum to complete, you need to keep dust from contaminating the oil. That means building a housing to cover the rack and bottles. This is easily accomplished using thin lath, for example, and covering the lath with clear plastic. The clear plastic sheeting will enable you to see what is happening, otherwise the suspense would drive you nuts.

When the process is complete, the oil soaked rope can be burned. In the old days, the oil soaked rope was wrapped around the base of gate or corner fence posts, and the slowly seeping oil would kill any termites, thus prolonging the life of important posts considerably. Now, however, the EPA would probably have you shot on sight for exposing the soil to the nasty oil soaked rope.

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HIGHGROUND

Although I have not tried this, I don't see why it would not work. In many 3rd world countries, the old oil is strained WELL , & diluted with regular diesel/heating oil at a rate of about 1/2 gallon oil to 10 gallons fresh diesel.I would try this in a heater, or old diesel before trying it in one of the newer diesels.

I knew a fellow who collected used motor oil, and what he didn't burn in his foundry or to heat the shop, he put in a couple of 250 gallon tanks to allow the water and dirt to settle out, then siphoned off the cleaner oil, filtered it, and used it to run his diesel engine powered generator to charge his batteries when it wasn't windy.

i imagine that if you have to treat any wood surface more than once, the oil is washing away. and where do you think it ends up? i cannot believe people still do this sort of thing in a time when we know so much more about the danger of polluting the water sheds. oil can be recycled and reused in so many other ways, it shouldn't be painted on wood as a preservative. my uncle does this. sure it works if you keep up with it every year. so would natural animal fats or vegatable oils.

find someone with a furnace that can burn the old motor oil or turn it in for recycling.

unfortunately we need roads and the asphalt and oils that come with them. sure they leech away and poison the environment. that is not a justification for dumping oil willy-nilly. there is no need to spread it around when it can be contained.
i imagine there are not too many homesteader-oils spreaders in the chesapeke bay region to tell storys of pollution. i imagine most of the oil dumpers are at the top of some hill and do not see the accumulation of oil runoff.

Ive seen it poured on the top of fence posts to keep the rain out of them

I agree with you to a point. But how many people here know that out around Santa Barbara and a few other places along CA coast line the oil just comes running out of the ground 24-7-7 and right into the ocean. Been doing it for way longer than we been around. things seem to work out all right there

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http://tnwoodwright.blogspot.com/

save your empty cough syrup bottles..fill them up with used motor oil..then give to your in-laws when they have a cold.

i wonder how much wildlife there is along that run from the tar pits. if there is any it probably resembles some of the three eyed fish we have just downstream from three mile island!

Yes, familiar with Santa Barbara....Peoplesee it and think the oil companies are polluting. Ignorance! Also around home we have "seeps" in creeks and streams where the water will havea rainbow sheen on it from where oil is seeping up through the ground. Funny it doesn't seem to affect the fish! Or the water quality??? Weird! I think alot of folks jump the gun to get in hysterics over enviromental issues when if they looked deeper they would find are baseless. Am I going to dump my waste oil in a creek? Of course not! But the nearest creek to me is several miles away. My fence posts contaminating my ground water? I doubt it since my well is 150' deep and people have been using oil and creosote as preservatives for many years still no effects. Have you ever noticed grass and even mushrooms cracking blacktop roads and growing in them? Hmmmm, shoots the petroleum poisoning the earth theory to heck just a little doesn't it? Cows are polluting our air with methane constantly maybe we should ban them. Sometimes I think that some folks with misguided enviromentalism are restricting our lives nearly as much as the same government they hate so much. Just my dos pennies.

Actually from what some fishermen I know from that area tell me the fishing is topnotch around the Santa Barbara field. Dang, there goes another theory.....

Hmm...

I've been reading in this thread about how used oil is great to start resistant or wet wood on fire, and then I read about how people are using it to "paint" wood on their structures.

This suggests to me that the oil may actually make a wooden structure more flammable.

Or am I missing something? (Wouldn't be the first time, eh?)

Pony!

That it would. If an y of you are familiar with "litered" or fat pine. The old houses built out of pine burnt QUICK!

It just seems like the petroleum, whether the fumes are overwhelming or not, is emitting fumes that are carcinogenic...you rinse the bleach away and it's gone, though. Not trying to argue, just bringng up a point. Bleach also deactivates many pesticides---I learned this when I was a certified pesticide applicator for my husband's business for many years.

Any kind of oil will do that---

I don't think you would get a significant amount of pollutants from fence posts. But in most places it is illegal, and with good reason, to dump petroleum products on the ground or in water. Especially in highly populated areas where many people depend on the water table, and they also have way too many people for all of them to dump safely. On the East End of Long Island, underground gas flumes from aging underground gas tanks have ruined wells for miles around and spiked cancer and other health issues. Our neighbor, when we lived there, had a tiny leak from her outdoor oil tank. I started noticing the smell of oil and it drove me nuts. When she had it replaced, the EPA demanded that the ground under it be removed to a certain depth and replaced with clean soil. For a tiny leak.

I really don't know about the situation in Santa Barbara, but even if the fishing is good, that doesn't mean the flesh of the fish is not storing toxins. It is not misguided environmentalism to want to know all the facts so that you can be a responsible citizen of planet earth. I know that there are wacky extremists out there, but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

How many people, after polluting their own bodies with cigarette smoke, have said, "I've been smoking for (fill in the blank) years, and there's nothing wrong with me!" Yet it is a fact that cigarettes are responsible for immense amounts of pain, suffering, sickness, death and financial loss.

Let's find acceptable alternatives instead of insulting folks who have reservations about dumping pollutants into the environment we all have to share and will hopefull pass on to another generation...

We also had some renters who ruined the rented house they were living in by putting used motor oil in the furnace---ruined the furnace and caused so much smoke damage that the house was unlivable...

I built a small chicken house out of pallet boards and decided to oil them for the same reasons as above .I have never had so many chronic respritory problems in chicken as I have after doing so.They all came from this chicken house.Not doing this any more! Maybe the outside but not inside.Whitewash is better.Mix up white wash put in bug sprayer and coat walls.MEO

It will cure mange on a dog.

if you are seeing a rainbow sheen from the oil i can guarentee you it is accumulating somewhere. maybe the stream you see moves rather fast, at least at the place you are talking about. but how about the areas where wetlands begin. is there an area with tall reeds and grasses and birds and such. or is it all asphalt by now. maybe the grass and reeds got covered by condos and a hotdog stand.

i do not live my life like an environmental extremist by any means. when i grow fruit, for example, i use toxic spray. i don't want to but it is the only way to achieve my goal. if there is a better, less invassive and more practical way of doing things, i try to listen to that little voice of reason. there is nothing wrong with using whitewash. it is environmentally safe. it builds up over time and actually petrifies the wood it is preserving. if you can burn or recycle your oil, then why not use a better method of preserving your wood.