You say you want to know why Camellia Oil is so special protecting steel from rust

Originally posted by clearblue
I'd like to know if anyone has found a better deal in their shopping around.
Click to expand...
If you look in grocery stores,
or especially health or gourmet food stores,
you'll find a pint screw-top metal can containing "tea oil"
priced about $15.

---(Not the same as "tea tree oil" in pharmacy.
----That seems to be a turpentine from a tree from Australia.
----Camillia is a different species.)

Here's a link with 8-oz $16:
http://www.hidatool.com/gardenpage/misc.html
 
"Camillia is a different species."

Seems so.

As far as camelina oil goes, it appears pretty similar to the related canola oil.

http://www.canola-council.org/pubs/fatcharts english.htm

Canola actually has more of the the anti-oxidant tocopherols (vit E).

Ten milliliters (2 teaspoons) of refined canola oil contain 1.9 mg vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), providing about one-fifth of a man's daily vitamin E requirement.

http://www.canola-council.org/pubs/vitamine.html

That works out to 19 mg/100ml for canola, vs the 7.9 mg/100ml cited in the camelina link.
http://www.camelina.fi/oil.htm

This will likely come up, so--

Canola oil is NOT rapeseed oil--the plant has been extensively altered through breeding to produce a different product.

Edible vegetable oils are made up of components called fatty acids. These fatty acids determine the use of vegetable oils for either edible or industrial uses. Certain fatty acids, such as linoleic, are considered essential in human diets since they cannot be synthesized by the body but must be obtained from the diet. The rapeseed varieties that were grown produced oils containing large amounts of eicosenoic and erucic acids which are not considered essential for human growth.

As early as 1956 the nutritional aspects of rapeseed oil were questioned, especially concerning the high eicosenoic and erucic acid contents. In the early 1960's, Canadian plant breeders responded quickly with isolation of rapeseed plants with low eicosenoic and erucic acid content...

... an oil that must contain less than 2% erucic acid, and the solid component of the seed must contain less than 30 micromoles of any one or any mixture of 3-butenyl glucosinolate, 4-pentenyl glucosinolate, 2-hydroxy-3 butenyl glucosinolate, and 2-hydroxy-4-pentenyl glucosinolate per gram of air-dry, oil-free solid.

http://www.canola-council.org/pubs/origin.html

(Don't freak out over the glucosinolates either they're substances that are precursors to the compounds that give mustard a sharp taste. They were reduced so cattle would eat the seeds after the oil was pressed out--I guess they don't enjoy mustard.)

Bottom line, so far I see nothing to definiatively recommend the camelina oil over canola oil.

Would either be particularly suited for blade care? The very fact that they are particularly rich in unsaturated oils, which are the kind that oxidize polymerize would seem to suggest no. The polyunsaturated components will be the most reactive and produce the most crosslinking and polymerization. The endogenous antioxidants might prevent thickening and polymerization for a while, but they will eventually be exhausted since they provide protection by getting selectively oxidized themselves. The propensity of olive oil to get sticky and gummy on blades has been noted several times in the forum. Like camelina and canola oil, olive oil is mostly unsaturated and usually contains considerable quantities of tocopherols:

Olive oil contains a-tocopherol, the tocopherol with the highest vitamin E activity, in quantities varying from 1.2 to 43 mg/100g (1-3). On average, the amount present in the oil is about 12 to 25 mg 100g, as reported by one group (3). Others found even higher values of 24 to 43 mg/100g (2).

http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/prom/olive medinfo/uk_ie/factsheets/fact9.htm

So far, I think that camelina, canola, and olive oil will likely behave similarly if used on blades.

OK, what about camellia oil?

Wow, this is a nice table:

"Camellia oil is pressed from the seeds of a certain plant in the camellia family. It contains rich nutrition with light color and pure taster. It is one of the richest that contains single unsaturated fatty acid in all of the vegetable oil; its unsaturated fatty acid is up to 85%. It is used in the field of cooking and cosmetics at present.

Items......... Monounsat. Fat...... Polyunsat Fat ....Saturated Fat
Camellia Oil ... 80% ..................8% .............12%
Olive Oil .......77%....................9% .............14%
Canola Oil ......62%...................32% .............6%
Peanut Oil . ....49%...................33% ............18%
**Camelina oil..ca32%...............ca56% .......ca 10% **
Corn Oil ........25%....................62% ...........13%
Soybean Oil.....24%.................... 61% ...........15%
Sunflower Oil...20%................... 69% ...........11%
Safflower Oil...13%....................77% ............10% "

http://www.bulkoil.com/scripts/bulk_item.asp?p_com 150

**Camelina values interpolated from the table appearing here:
http://www.camelina.fi/oil.htm
and inserted into table.

Now, what to think? Looks like camellia oil and olive oil are the best bets, and one can expect canola oil to get thick and tacky, and camelina oil to be worse still.

I didn't find the amount of tocopherols in Camellia oil. It very much resembles olive oil in the fat profile. Both are very low in polyunsaturated fats. I suspect that it was the best product available many years ago, before other oils were available. I also suspect that it would eventually harden and get tacky as does olive oil. Considering the high level of care devoted to the impliments it is traditionally used on, I think that a build up of old oil was not allowed to occur. If anybody tries the camellia oil over time, a report would be appreciated.

It should be expected that the oils with the most polyunsaturated fat will be most prone to thicken or harden through polymerization, as described in one of ddeans interesting links:

What characterizes a drying oil? The ratio of the rate of oxidation of Oleic, Linoleic, and Linolenic Acids is 1:10:25. It is easier to polymerize carbon chains with two nearby C=C bonds (linoleic) than it is with just one double bond (oleic). Three such bonds in close proximity make it even better (linolenic). The presence of the three double bonds also promotes the 3-dimensional gel cross-linking, as does high GU3 content.

http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~nickl/wood.html

Note that from the table in
http://www.camelina.fi/oil.htm
the amount of oleic: linoleic:linolenic acids is

10.24:14.75:38.72 or about 1:1.5:3.8.

probably eicosenoic acid (abundant homolog of oleic acid) should be counted too, which would give something like:

2.5:1.5:3.8

(Recall that eicosenoic acid isone of the components that was deliberately bred OUT of canola--it's present at nearly 11% in camelina!)

For tung oil, from
http://www.members.iinet.net.au/~nickl/wood.html
we get:

2.3:1.6:5.2

....considering that the non-drying(coconut, olive, peanut) and semi-drying oils(almond, corn) don't have any linolenic (or in the case of linseed oil eleosteric) acids with three double bonds, and camelina oil has a lot of linolenic acid (38% as the alpha form) one might even expect camelina oil to be drying oil! I'm not going to bother to see what another drying oil, walnut oil is like, though--I've had enough.

Is this horse dead yet??:p
 
Y'all can get an 8 ounce pump spray bottle of genuine Camellia Oil from Woodcraft for $14.99 (www.woodcraft.com). Used sparingly, 8 ounces would last a considerable time.;)

Sarge
 
Originally posted by firkin
"Camillia is a different species."Considering the high level of care devoted to the impliments it is traditionally used on, I think that a build up of old oil was not allowed to occur.
Click to expand...
True.
And those weapons were completely disassembled for a proper,
full cleaning in which the old oil was first removed.

Another measure of the tendency to oxidize & harden
is the iodine index for oils.

The higher the index #, the greater the tendency to 'dry', harden.
Also, these are for pure oils.
Many oils have anti-oxidants added; Vit.E & other
to slow hardening/rancidity.

It does not tell the 'character' of the hardened oil.

http://www.millersoap.com/soapdesign.html#Properties
has a couple of good tables that includes the iodine index.
Here's a direct link to one:
http://www.millersoap.com/fatacidtab.html

Hemp oil : 166
Tung oil : about 150 I think
Grapeseed oil : Sunflower : Wheat Germ Oil : 130
Soybean : 128
Canola : 115
Corn Oil : 115
Linseed oil : 110 (again for pure oil, most linseed is treated)
Olive oil : 88

Most of the oils in the list probably fall into the 90-110 range.

The most non-drying oils (with 'lowest' iodine index) include:
Coconut oil <10
Babassu Oil : 15 (I don't know yet, never heard of it)
Cocoa Butter : Palm Kernal oil : 37
Tallow : Lard : 44
Palm oil : 50

From this, it may be that we should use coconut oil.
:eek:
Smell nice!
 
Not to pull the leg off a lame mule but these ol gals seem to think it's about the best thing since frozen dinners.

http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/Forum15/HTML/002408.html

Based on their anecdotal evidence,I think I'll put a little on what hair I've got left in the morning and pat a little on my chin after shaving and I'll report back on the results.:D :eek:

BTW ebay has some excellent offers on pure camellia and coconut oil
 
"Another measure of the tendency to oxidize & harden is the iodine index for oils...It does not tell the 'character' of the hardened oil."

That's because it doesn't distinguish between the mono-unsaturated oils and the poly-unsaturated oils. A mixture of all mono-unsaturated oils can't crosslink like the tri-unsaturated oils in a mixture of 2/3 saturated oils and 1/3 tri-unsaturated oils that would have the same iodine index.

Would the latter ever get hard enough to be useful? dunno. But it seems notable that linseed oil and tung oil in the table I cited are the only ones with tri-unsaturated fatty acids.

As far as coconut oil goes, remember that while it is fully saturated, that many of the hydrocarbon chains are much shorter than other oils yet it has the same polar glycol ester linkages at the fatty acid end--so it may be less able to resist water--it has has less "grease for the same polarity.

I may be biased here though, there's so much crap that smells like coconut oil already, I'm well past sick of it.

It's hard to imagine anything being better than pure long chain hydrocarbon for resisting moisture, at least for oil on metal.

Put any of these vegetable oils in base, and you have soap. Same for animal oils. Put mineral oil in base and you have mineral oil floating on top of the base. Pure hydrocarbon, not fatty acid ester. About the only way you can change it is to burn it, at least under typical conditions a knife might see. My suspicion is that the camilla oil was selected because it was the best thing available in the times before pure hydrocarbons were available.

Of course pure hydrocarbons are not beneficial for human metabolism, so they make poor choices for cooking.

Whether one adds a bit of cinnamon oil, or Rusty's favorite hedonistic lubricant for pizazz, I doubt that one can beat good old mineral oil--and it's cheap unless one buys it with some marketing attached, like "cutting board oil".
 
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