Bar Oil

[DutchInNZ]

It has been mentioned somewhere before: used, filtered W-type engine oil. No problem, works in all temperatures. My saws use just under 1 tank of oil on one tank of gasoline, so the saw runs out of gas before out of chain oil.

 

[RayIN]

It has been mentioned somewhere before: used, filtered W-type engine oil. No problem, works in all temperatures. My saws use just under 1 tank of oil on one tank of gasoline, so the saw runs out of gas before out of chain oil.

Monitor bar N chain wear though.

 

[DutchInNZ]

Why Used Engine Oil is a Concern

• Carcinogenic Agents: While unused engine oil has a low risk, the process of running an engine creates polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other combustion products which accumulate in the oil over time. These PAHs are known carcinogens.
• IARC Classification: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies used engine oils as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning it is known to cause cancer in humans.
• Specific Cancers: The primary cancer linked to dermal exposure is squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, particularly scrotal cancer, which was one of the first recognized occupational diseases.

Polycyclic phenols are indeed suspected to be carcinogenic if during a long time (i.e. more days) being in direct and intensive contact with the skin. For comparison: put a cloth around your arm and keep it wet with gasoline. After two or three hours the nerves in that arm will be temporarily completely insensitive and, if longer, irreversibly so. When chainsawing I am more concerned about the gasoline and its fumes than about an incidental drop of oil that I wipe off my hands. Things are always relative; once aspirin was declared poisonous on longer term use in mice tests, but they forgot to tell that the doses were 100 times the normally advised milligrams per kilogram body weight.

Scrotum cancer was indeed one of the first diagnosed ones, and, as the story goes, specifically with English chimney sweeps. At that time, the people did not have the habit of washing their body parts or clothes every now and then and it was the continuous contact with soot dust in their underpants that caused it. After they were instructed to regularly take a bath this cancer all but disappeared. Don't laugh about that: male circumcision is for the same reason: if in the desert you don´t have water to wash, then you take the skin off as a permanent solution and to make sure, make it a religious rule. That might indicate that the basis of the Semitic peoples, the Jews and the Mid-Easterners, is the same, however much they are hating each other now.

 

[thclimer]

I've heard a concern with used motor oil is its potential for it to be aerosolized and you breath it in.

There are so many unknowns about cancer today. However, what we do know, is there are specific chemicals that will cause it, then there are so many more that are suspected to cause it.

I look at it this way, while using used motor oil as chain saw bar oil is not going to kill you directly the day after you use it. I'd have to imagen that It can be lumped into the pile as a contributing factor, like so many other things that we suspect that over time can cause cancer. If its easy to eliminate one of the contributing factors then why not.