[ Nigel Perry wrote in 070823 MMDigest:

> One puzzling feature that emerged from the many emails: why the
> aggression?  It was an innocent question.  I am not a chemist and an
> an amateur mechanical music enthusiast, like many of you I suppose,
> but some responses were laden with "it is _nothing_ like" and
> "certainly _not_ like WD40".  (I thought WD stood for War Department,
> but then I am only an ignorant British citizen.)  I'll try not to ask
> such a stupid question again.

Your curiosity is quite justified.  It seems that you inadvertently
touched upon an odd bit of the contemporary American character, and it
requires some explanation.

In the USA, WD-40 has characteristics in common with Coca-Cola and
Microsoft Windows:

(1) They are heavily advertised,
(2) they contain ingredients which are kept famously secret by their
    respective manufacturers, and
(3) they've been extremely successful and profitable.

WD-40 is a spray lubricant in a can.  It has been claimed, without much
proof, that

* It will cause massive corrosion of brass and steel parts, especially
when sprayed into a lock,

* It consists of pure kerosene (paraffin in the UK),

* It will solidify when sprayed into a mechanism.

None of these claims is true.  What it won't do is work miracles, which
is why it's unsuccessful in freeing locks which have been injected with
glue (this occasionally occurs in schools), nor will it remove all of the
rust and wear from a clock movement or other mechanism.  The kerosene
content seems odd given that there was a non-flammable version of the
product sold some years ago.

There are many other products like WD-40 on the market here and, though
the content varies, the main strategy is the same: you take a lubricant
and dissolve it into another fluid that evaporates easily, and pressurize
the mixture into a spray can.  When sprayed onto metal, the thin fluid
moves into small spaces through capillary action, breaks the 'wetting'
action of any water molecules that may be present from the metal
surfaces, and then the light carrier evaporates, leaving a film of
lubricant behind.

Both the carriers and the lubricants vary: there is one product known
as "LPS" which uses oil of wintergreen as one ingredient.  This gives
your mechanism a somewhat exotic aroma, but it works quite well.

Both WD-40 and Coca-Cola are said to have various medicinal qualities,
some of which are fatal and undesirable.  Both will remove rust from
steel, though I've never had much luck doing this with Coca-Cola.

Other legends surround the Windows operating system.  Coca-Cola is said
to contain both prune juice and cocaine, Windows is supposed to contain
code stolen from every possible source.

The sociological phenomenon of these products is far more interesting,
however.  It is mostly an element of envy, for the firms are very
wealthy and successful.  Add to this the mysterious contents and the
fact that they're all in a highly-competitive marketplace filled with
smaller operators who might benefit from even a hint of controversy.

And there is, of course, the American love of the underdog, and of
conspiracy theories that add interest to these otherwise-unexciting
fields of endeavor.

And so, yes, WD-40 is a controversial product, though there is
little about the product itself that would justify this.  Any sort of
legend might originate from someone frustrated by a locked-up bolt,
or a locked-up computer.  As for Coca-Cola -- well, it was originally
supposed to be somewhat medicinal.

Mark Kinsler
Lancaster, Ohio USA
http://www.mkinsler.com/

 [ Compare the claims at these web pages:
 [   http://www.wd40.com/  (includes 3-in-1 oil)
 [   http://www.tsi301.com/policeletters.htm
 [ -- Robbie