An option for thinning grease for spinning reels and smaller levelwinds

[jurelometer]

There are quite a few folk here that like to thin the more readily available NLGI 2 thickness grease so that it creates less resistance, especially for spinning reels.

There are some recipes floating around to thin grease. Most of them involve using solvents that break down the thickener, which is not ideal for keeping the grease from degrading over time. Some folks add an unrelated oil, but it is not clear how well the oil will stay suspended in the grease, although some combos do have a bit of a track record with the pros here that do a bunch of reels.

The best technical option is to buy grease in some thinner grades (usually NLGI 1, or NLGI 0), but these are harder to find, and often only come in larger quantities.

I have been looking at one other option:   Greases are simply  mostly oil with a bit of thickener added.  If you can find a manufacturer that sells both an NLGI 2 grease, and separately the same oil used in the grease. you can blend to two yourself to fine tune to the thickness that you prefer.

One manufacturer where this is possible is Super Lube.  Both the NLGI 2 grease (Multi-Purpose Synthetic Grease with Syncolon) and the oil (Multi-Use Synthetic Oil with Syncolon) are attractively priced and not hard to find in small and large quantities at your favorite hardware store or e-commerce web site.

I sent a request on blending these products to Super Lube, mentioning that this was for fishing reels, and received a reply stating that blending these products to thin the grease for this purpose was fine.  Mixing well was important, and the more oil that you add, the greater the chances of it eventually separating.

Several of us here are Super Lube fans.  I like it because I can also use it on carbon fiber drags and it is non-toxic.   But if you are using a grease from another major supplier like Mobil or Lucas, you can probably do something similar.  It is more difficult with  those "magic" reel specific products, where the actual lubricant manufacturer and product line is hidden.

No affiliation with Super Lube. Just a full retail paying customer that uses their grease on reel gears, carbon fiber drags, cork  drags, ball bearings, garage doors, oven hinges, etc. Reels are not that demanding when it comes to lubricant performance, so having an effective food safe multipurpose option swung the deal for me.

Hope y'all find this useful

-J

[JasonGotaProblem]

Pretty clever. Thank you

[Midway Tommy]

Thanks for taking the time to do the sleuthing and then sharing the response, Dave!

[Gfish]

Yeah, add to that simplifying things by narrowing it down to one manufacturer.

[tincanary]

I use enough of the Super Lube NLGI1 that I buy it by the can.  I use it on most reels in general, the only exceptions being larger conventional reels.  Anything bigger than an ABU 6500 gets NLGI2.  I also use Super Lube 90W gear oil religiously as well.  It's awesome for worm gears, support bearings, and sliding components on brake plates.

[thorhammer]

I use on my run-off-the-mill freshwater trollers like the 330/309 etc. of the world. Works fine. Corrosion X still on any bearing tho.

[0119]

I prefer Rocket Fuels Liquid Grease. It's been hard to find and I have found Phil White's Tenacious Oil to work just as well.

[tincanary]

Aside from the Super Lube ISO 220 (90W), I also use ISO 10 (BFS spool bearings), ISO 22 (regular baitcast spool bearings), and ISO 68 (spinning reel bearings).  I'm weird and don't take a one-size-fits-most approach, but tailor my service like a scalpel depending on what myself or my customer is looking for.  I'll say this much, the ISO 220 in the worm and support bearings of a baitcast reel with a disengaging level wind makes for an exceptionally smooth experience.  The precision and the connected feeling you get just doesn't happen with the lighter oils.

Here are some handy charts.  Having gone deep down the rabbit hole, I now don't buy any lubricants from anybody that doesn't have a publicly available specification sheet.  I like to have that information so I can get an idea of how a reel might behave with said lubricant.

[jurelometer]

Thanks for posting the charts @tincanary. 

 If looking for reel grease we are pretty much playing in the NLGI 0 to 2 range. Below 0, we are getting into liquids, which us laymen would probably consider an oil.

For folks that don't want to go down the rathole, blending the correct base oil with NLGI 2, allows us access to the desired thickness without buying a bunch of different products in larger quantities.  And if you are super picky, you can even fine tune between the grades- make you own NLGI "1.25".  For under $USD 12, you can have NLGI 000 through 2 covered, and if you chose the right product, something that works well on CF and cork reel drags, and is useful around the house.

The Super Lube oil is around as thick as 30W motor oil, so a bit thick for ball bearings and levelwinds that are involved in casting.  That requires one more product a thinner oil or thin -film lubricant:

Common sewing machine oil works well, also serves lots of other purposes around the house, is cheap and readily available in small quantities.  The stuff that I could find classification on range in thickness from ISO VG 10 to 20.  Looking at Tincanary's chart, we see that that is a very thin oil.  You can also use the reel specific "magic-super-hot-sauce-rocket" oils, but you are mostly just wasting money IMHO.  The difference between the products in casting performance and corrosion protection will mostly be based on viscosity, and not any magic ingredient.

If looking for the best casting performance, thin film lubricants provide the least resistance, but will tend to wear off faster.  TSI 301 is a popular thin film lubricant here, but this is just one product among many in the category.  These products typically provide corrosion protection as well, but it is a good idea to apply a little before longer term storage, as unlike oils, thin films will not flow to recoat areas of wear.


-J

[jurelometer]

And it seems that every thread here on lubricants evolves (devolves?) into a string of posts on various members' favorite products.  I am going to take advantage of my OP status to note the following:

While there are lots of greases to choose from,  reels are not very demanding machinery when it comes to grease lubricants.  Frankly, I think what matters most is how toxic  stuff is when you are handling it, whether it is the right thickness for the situation, and how quickly it oxidizes inside the reel sitting on the shelf waiting for the next fishing trip. 

If you also intend to use the grease on carbon fiber and/or cork drags, look in the tech specs. Find a product with a high dropping point (maybe above 450F or so), and a PTFE additive, and you will have also found a drag grease.  The higher the dropping point, the better for the most demanding situations, but it won't matter for the vast majority of situations.  Super lube has a product that will work for short periods at up to 650F, which is about as high as I have seen.  I haven't tried the stuff myself.

Now back to our regularly scheduled devolution:

[Midway Tommy]

I'm glad I found a really good synthetic grease & oil well over a decade ago, which of course is Super Lube, so the only time I've actually wasted regarding lubrication is writing about it.     

[alantani]

yeah, i wear nitrile gloves religiously now. 

[Steve V.]

I thin Penn grease with Corrosion X.

[jurelometer]

I thin Penn grease with Corrosion X.

These do not appear to be closely related products - one is a synthetic oil based grease, and you are thinning it with a blend of mineral oil and a thin film lubricant. More details below.


Not saying that mixing random products does not work well enough sometimes, but rather that we increase the odds of staving off separation ( which is how grease ultimately fails in reels) by blending in more of the same base oil.

The point of this thread is that rather than mixing unrelated products, we can just add more of the same base oil from the same manufacturer, if we chose the right product family.

———

The details:

Penn grease is made by X-1R, and is most likely synthetic based.  Probably good stuff.  The SDS looks promising:
https://www.caltronics.info/mobile/files/OSHA/Service%20Technician%20Related%20SDS/PennPrecisionReelGrease-MSDS.pdf

Corrosion-x is a 90% mineral oil  based product (hydrotreated heavy paraffinic petroleum distalate) plus a thin film lubricant.  It is designed to leave  a thin film on metal surfaces to provide protection from corrosion and a bit of lubrication.

I was able to mix Corrosion-x into both mineral and synthetic based greases, but that doesn't tell us how long the oils will now stay in suspension. It is unlikely that this makes a better grease than the original recipes, which were carefully constructed by real (TM) chemists.  OTOH, reels are not so demanding when it comes to grease performance, so as long as you stay on top of maintenance, you can probably get away with lots of different random blends.

And now back to our regularly scheduled thread devolution:

-J

[DougK]

I've been doing the 'random blend' approach ;-)
this is a much more rational way, thank you..

recently overhauled a couple of old saltwater reels where I'd used some axle grease decades ago, it was nearly ossified and the reels barely turned.. on the plus side, everything was well preserved and no sign of rust.