Savvy users of laptop computers know that touch pads work best after one rubs the bridge of one's nose to 'lubricate' the touchpad finger, making it slide more easily. Sadly it's a finite resource. So let's brew up an analog and keep it in a little container nearby; similar to 'Sortwink' but with the opposite effect.-- Steamboat, Sep 11 2014 Nasal Sebum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_sebumWikipedia describes the benefits of nose oil. [AusCan531, Sep 12 2014] Relevant Designer_20Device_20Grease [rcarty, Sep 15 2014] Odd. I used to use a gas sniffer to examine fine welds that had been polished out of visibility.
A 316 stainless skin was built over an iron structure, then after polishing the skin was pressurized with...Helium, I believe it was? Something like that.
The sniffer could detect a very few ppm of gas, so if the weld was not perfect, but visually indetectable due to the polishing, the sniffer could pick up the gas leak.
When the sniffer became confused by too much exposure, or a propane forklift driving by, you took it apart, rubbed the small o-ring on your nose, put it back together and it worked just fine again.
And we never seemed to run out of nose oil, although some of us had nose oil that worked better than others.
If you used synthetic nose oil, would it have superior temperature resistance and durability just like synthetic motor oil ?-- normzone, Sep 11 2014 I was made aware at a young age, and before I had enough of my own to be useful, that nose oil was a good lubricant for fishing reels.
Later I became aware that nose oil could be used to kill the head on foamy tap beer. One Mr Casten would sometimes run out as young women approached him to first caress his nose and then correct their beers.
So yes: a myriad of uses! +-- bungston, Sep 11 2014 Nose oil is also traditionally used when gilding. It is tickly applying genuine nose oil to the brush, so synthetic might be worth trying.
Presumably it would come with a synthetic nose so as to be easy to dispense in the usual way?-- pocmloc, Sep 11 2014 An interesting horological note: if you apply nose-oil to the balance wheel of a wristwatch which is misbehaving, you'll ruin it completely.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 11 2014 The knot of a necktie, the bill of a baseball cap, or the frame of your eyeglasses would all be good places for the synthetic nose oil to be. Packaging that allows the product to be as close to the work as your nose will be more important that oil formulation.-- popbottle, Sep 11 2014 [+]
[norm], what process was used on the welds? Just curious. Also, 316 what? CM? Gas bath finishing seems extravagant for anything short of a nuclear reactor.-- Alterother, Sep 12 2014 At any given time of year you could harvest enough naturally to keep stocks high.-- FlyingToaster, Sep 12 2014 Nose oil is useful for massaging into the pores of a new clarinet reed when breaking it in.
Nose oil is fairly effective for helping to remove remaining adhesive after pealing a paper price sticker. After removing a sticker and picking off most of the paper, simply rub the pad of your thumb across your nose then rub forcefully over the remaining sticker residue. The nose oil will allow large chunks of adhesive and remaining paper to ball up an be more easily picked off. Thin films of adhesive will be loosened enough so that they can be polished off by rubbing on your jeans (or other sturdy cotton cloth). Multiple application of nose oil may be required. Substituting forehead grease/sweat can work for big jobs when the noise oil runs out. A cleaning solution such as Goo Gone is much quicker and less physical effort to use (I said "rub _forcefully_"), but it pretty much requires washing with soap and water afterwards. Nose oil can wiped off so that a metal or plastic surface looks and feels pretty clean.-- scad mientist, Sep 12 2014 [Alterother], I believe it was TIG welded, 316 stainless. The outfit made process equipment - think of centrifuges ranging in size from a small chair to as large as your big deuce truck.
The market for these giant washing machines included pharmaceuticals, shampoos, explosives (not always deliberately, periodically we lost a customer), and anything you wanted to make in big batches. Sometimes the goal was to extract a solid from a liquid, other times it was the other way around.
We used a lot of 316, 302, hastelloy, and titanium. Economics drove large carbon steel weldments coated in exotic skins, and sometimes castings. All good fun for a guy getting started in QC and inspection.-- normzone, Sep 15 2014 When I read // centrifuges // I suddenly got it. Pretty cool. Your description verges on welderotica.-- Alterother, Sep 15 2014 Amusingly enough, a search for "welderotica" yielded only five hits, none of which were pertinent. Maybe if I publish it as a monthly [Alterother] will subscribe to it.-- normzone, Sep 15 2014 // Gas bath finishing seems extravagant for anything short of a nuclear reactor. //
It's widely used in ISM applications - like pharma - and it's essential for ultra high vacuum equipment, like mass spectrometers and particle accelerator beam lines. Where you're terminating a thin tube with a relatively thick flange, you only get one go at the weld.
The sniffer gas would be helium, the detector probaby a small quadrupole mass spec; properly tuned, they can sniff down to ppb levels.
When building and testing mass specs, it's trivially easy to tune them to helium - they often have a "leak detect" mode - and then just blow a little helium at any suspect joints. Since even a fairly cheap unit can detect down to 1 x 10^-9 mBar, leaks soon show up.-- 8th of 7, Sep 15 2014 It was fun to take a piece polished so the weld was indetectable, find a leak, and mark the spot and tell the welder it leaked and to do it over again. They look at you like you're crazy.
The next time you have to make them watch you test it..-- normzone, Sep 15 2014 my uncle taught me 40+ years ago to use nose oil to lubricate door hasps. Still use this handy hint to this day.-- csea, Sep 16 2014 my uncle taught me 40+ years ago to use nose oil to lubricate door hasps. Still use this handy hint to this day.-- csea, Sep 16 2014 Slight stereographic quality to last two posts. Not to mention nose trapped in door hazard.-- not_morrison_rm, Sep 16 2014 //nose trapped in door hazard//
pince-nez-- AusCan531, Sep 16 2014 // door hasps // What part do you lubricate, the hinge? I could see how nose oil might be handy to lubricate the latch on a typical door, making it slide more smoothly over the strike plate. Is that what you meant?-- scad mientist, Sep 16 2014 Come clean [MB], nose oil is a primary ingredient in Rentishams, isn't it?-- RayfordSteele, Sep 16 2014 I read a science-fiction story, decades ago, where the young hero lands on Mars and winds up stuck there. He builds an air compressor, which squeaks. When his girlfriend comes after him, she silences the squeaky compressor with nose oil.-- baconbrain, Sep 16 2014 //primary ingredient in Rentishams, isn't it?//
It might be rumour, but I heard Rentisham's is unique in having several primary ingredients.-- bs0u0155, Sep 16 2014 //nose oil is a primary ingredient in Rentishams, isn't it?//
During the early development work, Benthamby Rentisham tried many, many ingredients. According to his notebook, preserved at the Rentisham museum, formulations 455 through 533 included greater or lesser amounts of nose oil, harvested in a variety of ways. He eventually concluded that, whilst nose oil was superbly flegative even in small quantities, it was not sufficiently consistent to form the basis of a reliable product. It was not until formulation 673 that he found a substitute which was not only as highly flegative as the best nose oil, but was consistent from batch to batch.
I am not, of course, at liberty to disclose which of the ingredients listed on the Rentisham's tin supplies the uniquely flegative quality of The Wax; nor how it is processed, which remains a secret known only to a very few people.
As an interesting side-note, you may be surprised to learn that Prince Philip suffers from a rare and hereditary condition known as xeroderma naris, which results in an insufficiency of nose oil. He can sometimes be seen massaging the bridge of his nose, and the astute observer will note that before doing so he dips his hand into his jacket pocket, wherein rumour has it he keeps a tublet of Rentisham's.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 16 2014 There is a rumour that Freud had his nose operated on several times because, among other reasons, it was the centre of the id. We understand why you want nose oil on your touch pad. Sicko.-- 4and20, Sep 16 2014 No, no … he was simply misunderstood, or pehaps misheard. Sigmnd Freud was Jewish, and what he actually said was" centre of the yid", but in his heavy accent confusion was inevitable.-- 8th of 7, Sep 16 2014 you mean "scenter of the yid".-- FlyingToaster, Sep 16 2014 Well of course, it all makes sense now, doesn't it ? The whole discipline of psychoanalytics founded on nothing more than a couple of misheard words …-- 8th of 7, Sep 17 2014 dibertly miss under standing: So the synthetic nose needs oiling?-- pashute, Sep 17 2014 I had no knowledge of this nose oil gem you have described. I love this. +-- blissmiss, Sep 18 2014 random, halfbakery