Originally Posted by
djwpe
The petroleum oil kills the bacteria that otherwise feed on synthetic oil and result in the “green slime” biofilm that tends to grow in horns lubricated with Hetman’s.
So it's all you Blue Juice users who are DESTROYING OUR PLANETARY ECOSYSTEM? Oops, another digression. Sorry.
But exactly what strains of bacteria in our instruments feed on the synthetic oils that we're all using? I've sure never noticed any slime from using a variety of synthetic oils.
I don't use Hetman's -- way too many horror stories about various slimes with it. But don't generalize from Hetman's to "synthetic oil". And I don't recall its being established that the slime produced with/by Hetman's involves bacterial action. References? (Not being snotty about this. Just really curious if this has been determined since we've been speculating about the cause here for several years.) A lot of people absolutely love Hetman's and have no problems with it.
The other thing I would suggest and Blue Juice allows you to do without guilt is to “use lots” of oil, rather than buying very expensive oil and conserving it. This type of low force sliding contact needs lots of lubrication of some kind. Buy the “studio’ size bottles and don’t skimp.
Well, I feel that I'm striking a small blow on behalf of the endangered planetary bacteria. Also, I just buy expensive oil and then don't conserve it -- and find myself curiously bereft of guilt. Life's too short. Besides, you don't actually have to conserve it, since it lasts so much longer in application. Look at the revolution that synthetic lubricants have yielded for trombone slide lubrication -- where I suspect that pretty much nobody uses anything else any longer (if you can even get non-synthetic trombone slide lubricants).
If you really want to save money, do what a bunch of the old tuba guys do: get ultrapure lamp oil (kerosene) by the quart and use it on your valves every 15 minutes or so. It is in fact an excellent light lubricant, entirely "natural" (well, modulo all that refining), very inexpensive ($8/quart or less), slightly stinky (but nothing like Blue Juice ), washes off fast, and doesn't give a particularly attractive flavor to your instrument. But some people really dig it.
Gary Merrill
Wessex EEb Bass tuba (DW 3XL or 2XL)
Mack Brass Compensating Euph (DE N106, Euph J, J9 euph)
Amati Oval Euph (DE 104, Euph J, J6 euph)
1924 Buescher 3-valve Eb tuba (with std US receiver), Kelly 25
Schiller American Heritage 7B clone bass trombone (DE LB K/K10/112/14 Lexan, Brass Ark MV50R)
1947 Olds "Standard" trombone (Olds #3)