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With the increased cost of saw oil, it is all the more important to reclaim the dirty oil in your saw, not to mention the ecological imperative to minimize this type of waste. As we all know, oil doesn't wear out, so if we can keep it clean, it will last indefinitely. During a recent Open House we held at our shop, a system used in a large southwestern lapidary recreation room for an R.V. trailer park was related to us.According to Don, these people reclaim 85 to 90 percent of their oil with this process. The R.V. folks use a stock tank on legs fitted with a false bottom made of expanded metal, elevated a foot or so off the bottom of the tank. A valve is installed in the bottom of the tank to drain off the clean oil after processing. When their saws get dirty, they clean out the sludge and pour it into a common ordinary paper grocery bag(s) set on the expanded metal false bottom of the stock tank. The oil is filtered as it seeps through the sides of the paper bag leaving the sludge in the bag and the cleaned oil in the bottom of the tank.Don watched this process work for the entire time he stayed in the park and reported that the system seemed to work quite well and surprisingly fast. Although this system was designed to process the sludge from many saws, it should work regardless of the number of saws, whether it's a stock tank or a five-gallon bucket.Since we run our saws pretty much continuously here at Stone Age, we would realize quite a savings, if we could cut down our consumption of this expensive product. So rest assured, we are going to try this, at least, on a test basis. Maybe some of you would like to do the same.THANKS Don for the tip!
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