Bruce Clark was asking if silicone grease migrated through the wood
and prevented future repairs.  This question has been covered several
times before.

Now if anybody else wants to know all the details about silicone
grease, I suggest they first go to the MMD Archives (which is what they
are there for) and do a little research.  You will find that while
Vaseline, neat's-foot oil, mink oil and lanolin oils do penetrate the
wood deeply and become difficult to remove, silicone oil mostly stays
on the surface and will not vaporize either, like the others do.  The
reason is the physical size and mass of the molecule.  Those were the
main considerations I had before using it.

Then I had a chance to see if in fact such was the case, about 20 years
later.  I was right.  Old pouches that I had treated a long time ago
had to be removed and replaced to speed up an action that I had merely
repaired in house for someone, momentarily.  No problem.  I didn't even
have to use solvent.

This is not to say that by thinning out and applying silicone grease to
end grain that you won't saturate the wood with it, because you will.
It is to say that it doesn't even penetrate all the way through a piece
of leather, though.  So you can apply it to a freshly hot hide glued
pouch and it will stay glued.  It will not wet and weaken the bond.
I still use 111 trichloroethylene as my thinner, but methyl-ethyl
ketone (MEK) will work, too.

Craig Brougher

 [ Articles on various silicone products are indexed at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/KWIC/S/silicone.html
 [ and articles about grease are at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/KWIC/G/grease.html
 [
 [ Dow Corning 111 silicone grease is mentioned in
 [ MMDigests of 971207, 991005, 991209, 000315 and 011202.
 [ -- Robbie