[SEL] OT: Spindle Oil, Lathes & Hammonds

[guitronics]

Man, if that Hammond is a "B3" it's worth a fortune.I'd contact AMSOIL 
and ask 'em what kind of oil to use....they'll know.

John Culp wrote:

> I've been playing around with the old Hammond organ down at the church 
> in the Sunday school classroom again today. The sound of those things 
> is generated by spinning shafts with wheels on them, the wheels having 
> teeth cut in their edge that rotate past magnetic pickups, producing a 
> constant frequency for each number of teeth and RPM. Those frequencies 
> are blended together by a drawbar control system to make the different 
> tones of the organ. The shaft system is maintained at a constant speed 
> by a synchronous motor, but it's not self-starting and is started by a 
> shaded pole induction motor with a Bendix drive that engages a 
> starting gear, much like an automotive starter. The Bendix drive was 
> sticking on this and didn't seem to be loosening up since I lubricated 
> the tone generator 2 months ago, so I took off the back cover, found 
> the Bendix and put a few drops of ATF on the starter gear and the 
> shaft it slides on. (Had the ATF handy.) Works like a champ now!
>
> That got me thinking again about the special Hammond tone generator 
> oil. (I'd borrowed some back in January, and gave it back.) Hammond, 
> like just about everybody else that's sold a car, motorcycle, 
> chainsaw, weedeater, sewing machine, etc., claimed that only their oil 
> could be used, and since they went out of business in the early '80s 
> and Hammond-Suzuki which now owns the name doesn't have anything to do 
> with the old ones, original Hammond oil has gotten to be an expensive 
> item on eBay. The folks who work on Hammonds are true believers in the 
> special nature of this oil and recommend nothing else. I just don't 
> believe that Hammond would've actually had some custom formulated oil 
> for that application, though. The tone generator is fundamentally a 
> lathe, with sintered bronze bearings at each end and the middle of the 
> three shafts. The main shaft rotates at 1800 RPM. (The two side shafts 
> run at different speeds, but I'm not sure what they are.) There's no 
> load on the shafts other than their own weight, and the whole tone 
> generator assembly is very light. The oil is delivered to the bearings 
> from a copper trough via capillary action through cotton threads, and 
> the synchronous run motor is lubed through a felt pad. (Hammond techs 
> think that that wick lubrication system is a unique design that 
> demands a very special oil.) The Hammond oil is a very pale yellow 
> color, a bit thinner than ATF but thicker than baby oil, and is very 
> clingy to metal surfaces. I'll bet it's ISO 22 spindle oil, like this:
> http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNSRIT?PMAKA=00254201
>
> I notice somebody on eBay is selling an "8 year supply of Hammond tone 
> generator oil," that is, a 4 oz. bottle, for a $10 starting bid or $15 
> "buy it now." It comes in a modern plastic bottle of a rather generic 
> sort, and I'll bet that guy's bought a 5 gallon pail or 55 gallon drum 
> of spindle oil and decanted it into those bottles. Sounds like a 
> pretty good moneymaking racket to me!
>
> That spindle oil's really pretty reasonably priced and ought to be a 
> useful general purpose lubricant wherever a light oil's needed.
>
> I stuck around and played on the Hammond a while, then slipped down to 
> the choir room and tuned up the not-as-old all-electronic Thomas organ 
> that was horribly out of tune. The oscillator tuning coils had frozen 
> solidly in place, tight as Dick's hatband, but my old engine 
> experience kept me from breaking anything. I applied some penetrating 
> oil a month ago, and today all but one of the 12 coils were free, and 
> that one happened to already be in tune!
>
> Not engines or stack music, but I've had a pretty good day mechanically!
>
> John Culp
> Bristol, Tennessee, USA
>
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