Borrowed from damnriders.org

Machinists Workshop Mag™ recently published some information on various penetrating oils that I found very interesting. Some of you might appreciate this.

The magazine tested penetrates for break-out torque on rusted nuts.

They are below, as forwarded by a professional machinist.

They arranged a subjective test of all the popular penetrates with the control being the torque required to remove the nut from a scientifically rusted environment.


Penetrating oil .......... Average load

None ........................... 516 pounds
WD-40 ..................... ... 238 pounds
PB Blaster .................... 214 pounds
Liquid Wrench ............... 127 pounds
Kano Kroil .................... 106 pounds
ATF*- Acetone mix...........53 pounds

The ATF-Acetone mix was a home brew mix of 50 - 50 automatic transmission fluid and acetone.

Note that home brew was better than any commercial product in this one particular test.

Our local machinist group mixed up a batch and we all now use it with equally good results.

Note also that Liquid Wrench is almost as good as Kroil for about 20% of the price.

Steve from Godwin-Singer says that ATF-Acetone mix is the best and you can also use ATF- lacquer thinner 50 - 50 mix.

*ATF = Automatic Transmission Fluid