trombone slide oil chemical study - help requested

[yeodoug]

Hello all,

Like all players who came of age to play the trombone before the 1970s, I used oil to lubricate my trombone slide. I started playing the trombone in 1964, and I ruined, to my mother's dismay, more than a few pairs of trousers when, in my enthusiasm to get my slide in good shape, oil squirted all over.

Over the years, I switched to other lubricants, including Pond's cold creme and water, Trombotine, Superslick, and Yamaha slide lubricant. Today, slide lubricants abound and each player finds something that works. We've come a long way from the nineteenth century when the first reported slide lubricant (noted in Joseph Fröhlich's Musikschule of 1813) was olive oil from Provence, France. [See Howard Weiner's article, "Trombone Slide Lubrication and other Practical Information for Brass Players in Joseph Fröhlich's Musikschule (1813)," Historic Brass Society Journal , Vol. 21, 2009 - the article is available for free download at https://www.historicbrass.org/edocman/h ... Weiner.pdf.]

For a long time, I have wondered what exactly was in the trombone slide oil that so many players inhaled for nearly a century, since Frank Holton started marketing his "Electric Oil" in 1897. I have enlisted the help of an organic chemist at Wheaton College who will be making a chemical analysis of the contents of several bottles of historical trombone slide oil that I have collected. At the same time, I am at work compiling a history of trombone slide oil and together, we plan to publish the findings in a peer-reviewed chemistry journal and the International Trombone Association Journal.

Here is a photo of the six bottles of trombone slide oil that I plan to have analyzed (I have collected many other trombone slide oil bottles but they are empty).



I'd like to know if any forum members have other bottles of historical trombone slide oil by other makers that they would be willing to sell or donate to me so I could use them in this study. The six bottles that I have will give us a good sample of the kinds of oil used by players over many years. But there are certainly other companies that made slide oil in the first half of the twentieth century. For instance, I would love to find a bottle of trombone slide oil made by the Standard Oil Company (ESSO, now EXXON). That the largest oil company in the world made trombone slide oil is something I find fascinating. See this advertisement that I recently acquired, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 6, 1946:



If you have a bottle of historical trombone slide oil you'd be willing to part with for this study, I'd love to hear about it. Please reply to this thread or email me; my email address may be found on my Wheaton College bio page:

https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/faculty/douglas-yeo/

Thank you very much for your help in what I hope will be an interesting and informative study on a little corner of trombone history.

-Douglas Yeo

[BGuttman]

Doug, I can't quite figure out why the two posted pictures don't show. I tried pasting the URL's (from using the Quote option) and they both show up nicely transferring the URLs into my browser. Maybe there is another way to add the address.

My memory of slide oil is probably similar to yours. I used it extensively as a kid until I was enlightened to the wonders of Pond's when I started with Jack Nowinski in the mid 1960s.

The smell of the old slide oils shows a kinship to valve oils. I believe they are paraffin oils diluted in kerosene. You might have your chemist first try a gas chromatograph to see how many components are in the oil, and follow up with FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) on the separated parts.

I am very interested in what you discover. When I used slide oil I didn't know any better. It was a situation where "more is better" and slide oil is very forgiving in that respect. Problem is, no amount of oil can compensate for a dented, misaligned, or corroded slide.

One more (possibly digressive) thought. When I was in High School one kid used soap and water as his slide lube. I can't believe he came up with that on his own. Wonder if there was a school of thought to use that.

[OneTon]

I am seeing both pictures 5 X 5.

It is I nice project. I look forward to seeing the results.

I have moved too many times since using that product. I don’t think Conn Oil in a white 2.5 inch x 1.5 inch plastic bottle with red letters is historic enough for this project. My mother was successful in removing any stain short of oil well drilling mud. My pants were soiled but never ruined.

I was fortunate to receive private lessons early on. Herb Rankin showed me how to use Pond’s Cold Cream and water within my first year of playing.

[yeodoug]

The two images are showing up fine for me when I view the post but if you can't see them, you can go to them directly here:

Photo of six historical slide oil bottles:
http://www.yeodoug.com/_forum_images/Ye ... posite.jpg

Photo of 1946 Standard Oil Company trombone slide oil advertisement:
http://www.yeodoug.com/_forum_images/St ... t_1946.jpg

That's all I can think of to give access to these images.

Yes, we plan the kinds of tests/analysis you mention in your message, Bruce, and some other tests as well. We hope to do the testing this summer with initial findings by the fall. In addition to testing historical oils, we will test several trombone slide oils that are marketed today, and also several non-petroleum based trombone slide lubrication products. In all of this, the most important thing we hope to find is enough information about the chemical makeup to then share the findings with physicians and other scientists to learn how harmful was/is breathing the vapors. Their insights will inform the article as well. We won't be studying efficacy of the products. I learned long ago that the question, "What do you use on your slide?", is a way for people to start shouting at each other. We'll all figure out what works best for ourselves. What interests me in all of this is the history of trombone slide lubrication and the affects such lubrication has on health.

-Douglas Yeo

[yeodoug]

Here are the two images imbedded in another forum message:

[brumpone]

Almost certainly the images do not show because this site uses HTTPS and our browsers will not load content from non-secure sites. Unfortunately, Doug's site does not seem to support HTTPS

[Posaunus]

Almost certainly the images do not show because this site uses HTTPS and our browsers will not load content from non-secure sites. Unfortunately, Doug's site does not seem to support HTTPS

The oil bottle images display just fine on my computer monitor - but not on my mobile phone.

[BGuttman]

Interesting sidelight about the pictures. They showed up perfectly on my Linux computer in Firefox. Problem was on a Windows 10 computer using Vivaldi. Also didn't work on Windows 10 computer using Edge or the Linux computer using Vivaldi.

One caveat about analyzing old oils: There could be oxidation and evaporation that could change the composition of the material in the old bottles. In fact, the old bottles may not work as well as they did 100 years ago when the material was new. It might be possible to look at the current composition of the old oils and estimate what they were based on your collaborator's chemical knowledge. Unfortunately, if there were diluents in some of the oils they may be gone forever.

I am really looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

[Posaunus]

My guess is that Standard Oil (of Indiana) never sold the trombone oil under their own name, but either bottled it for instrument makers and stores with their labels, or sold it out in bulk to be bottled elsewhere.

In the 1960s (before oil companies became the evil empire), I worked at the Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron) Richmond Refinery, in the Lube Oil Compounding plant. We bottled Squibb Mineral Oil on a dedicated packaging line - Squibb sent us the labeled bottles, and we filled them, boxed and sealed, ready to ship. No mention of Standard Oil on the Squibb label. As I recall, it was White Oil No. 10, a common ingredient in commercial and automotive lubricants.

[afugate]

Doug, I can't quite figure out why the two posted pictures don't show. I tried pasting the URL's (from using the Quote option) and they both show up nicely transferring the URLs into my browser. Maybe there is another way to add the address.

The embedded images are standard HTTP. This website is HTTPS. Most browsers won't process embedded content that is non HTTP within an HTTPS page. It's a simple security precaution.

--Andy in OKC

[skeletal]

Does anyone know if this has been published?

[timothy42b]

One caveat about analyzing old oils: There could be oxidation and evaporation that could change the composition of the material in the old bottles.

Yes. The more volatile components are long gone - even sealed bottles allow some to escape through the threads, and the plastic ones certainly have some permeability. If there's a dropper the rubber bulb is a sieve. Your nose can probably tell the difference in smell. When I worked around petroleum spills we could tell the difference between fresh and aged.

As you point out, oxidation and other aging processes have certainly changed the properties somewhat. I don't know if that's enough to affect the number of carbons in the various chains included, but properties like viscosity and density are going to be way different. Oils are not a single chemical but a mixture of various carbon chain lengths. With synthetic oils you control which chain lengths you put in, but with nonsynthetic it's whatever your process gave you that day. (simplified)

And then there's biology. Some years ago I managed an engineering project to remove old underground storage tanks, mostly #2 fuel oil, and replace with the modern versions that had leak protection and detection. These were backup tanks rarely needed so the oil was old. We recovered the old oil and recycled it, but most was in good shape, easily pumped out. About 10 years later one of those tanks was removed when the building was demolished. It had a foot of what I can only describe as jello on the bottom, the product of microorganisms. A little research shows the chemical composition of fuel has changed over the years and it is more susceptible to being eaten.