Rob and All,

At 07:32 AM 3/11/2005, GYMKIDD319@aol.com wrote:

It is surprising how many of those 3 and 5 gallon containers develop a leak
on the bottom. It is as if the plastic shrinks and splits. Of course,
simply setting them down on something that overstresses the bottom would
probably be a primary cause, too. I have 3 such containers in my garage and
storage shed right now. To my knowledge, I only set one of them down on
anything that may have overstressed the bottom of the container. I use the
leaky ones for storing things, such as cast nets, when I don't care if the
bottom of the container leaks or not. One developed a leak when it had oil
in it. I had stored it in the storage shed on the concrete floor, so I was
lucky that the small mess was easily cleaned up. To my knowledge, I had
never put it down on anything but the concrete floor, as I transferred the
oil from it to one gallon containers I can easily store in the Celestial.
When I bought it, I thought that I would put it on the Celestial, but it
was too big and heavy to handle to pour oil out of when in the confines of
the engine room. I guess I could have used a pump of some sort, but didn't
have one then.

Goes to show......ain't nuttin' perfekt.

Take care and be safe.

Wayne
M/V Celestial
Albin43 Sundeck

HiHo Luboids,

Rob's post contains a number of misinterpretations that, I think,
could lead someone to improperly store their boat's lubricants. I'll
address the pertinent points below but it might be appropriate to
mention my 'bona fides'. I've worked in the oil bidness for about
thirty years. Aside from a couple of forays into tax preparation and
sales, most of that time has been involved with warehousing and
delivery. I have personally handled (conservative estimate):

2.1 million quarts
400K gallon jugs
200K 5 gallon pails
100K 55 gallon drums

Further, I've probably observed or been a party to something like 5
times those amounts from a supervisory or otherwise peripheral
position.

On to the main points:
----- Original Message -----
From: GYMKIDD319@aol.com

In actual fact this is a one in a million (or more) occurrence for oil
leaving the packaging plant. There is some product damaged in transit
but it's still a one in a half million occurrence by the time it
reaches a jobber's warehouse. A quality jobber will cull damaged
product (It's almost always extremely obvious) so we're back to one in
a million plus. Of course there's also a chance of damage in transit
to the retailer but, as above, such damage is easily detected and a
quality retailer will cull it. A slightly more common, but still rare,
type of 'leakage' is due to the package being improperly capped. This
is a little harder to detect since no product gets spilled until the
package is tipped (usually when the delivery driver leans his
hand-truck back. Did I mention that this is pretty rare? A LOT of
retailers routinely store their back-up stock with the cases laying on
their sides as a way of maximizing shelf space.

IMHO: The bow bilge is probably just about the worst place to store
oil. The pinhole leak that started this discussion was caused when the
container was set on top of something fairly sharp or when something
fairly sharp worked its way under the container. That 'sharp thing'
doesn't have to be very large or obvious; the most common 'sharp
thing' is probably a burr on an otherwise innocent screw head or other
piece of metal. Other potential 'sharp things' could include an
imperfection in the glass lay-up, un-chamfered wood joinery, or just
about any piece of debris that works its way down into where the oil
is stored. Keep in mind that the bilge is about as far down as you can
get. The other contributor to these leaks is motion. Set a quart of
oil in the wrong place and it might be just fine for decades just so
long as you don't bounce it around. OTOH: That same quart might not
last a single four hour trip if it's being constantly bounced around.
I'm not sure if this is universal, but I think of the bow as being a
comparatively high motion part of the boat. Finally, how often do you
look into the bow bilge area? Daily? Even in a day and with only a
pinhole leak you can have a pretty nasty mess on your hands!

In my experience it's actually far more likely to have problems with 5
gallon pails than with almost any other package. First, they're more
prone to break from being dropped or knocked over than are the smaller
containers. I've seen any number of these split wide open from being
dropped only a few inches. [In fairness, I've also seen pails smashed
completely out of their natural shape without leaking - it's
unpredictable.] I can't really back this up with hard statistics but
it also seems to me that you're more likely to find pails with an
improperly sealed lid compared to bottles or jugs with improperly
sealed caps. Speaking of pail lids, consider how the lid is aligned;
there is one correct and one incorrect but acceptable alignment for
the lid. The idea is that the pour spout shout be at right angles to
the bail handle for easy pouring. Most oil companies are pretty good
about doing this but some are a bit lax. I've seen a lot of pails with
the lid aligned in such a way that the pour spout is aimed right at
the bail handle. Speaking of pouring, if you can pour oil out of a 5
gallon pail into your engine without a funnel and without spilling oil
all over, you're a better man than I. There are aftermarket pour spout
attachments for pails (indicating a market need) but the ones that
I've seen leak like a sieve.

So, what to do? First, buy oil in the package that's most convenient
for you to USE. Different strokes for different folks but my own
preference would be to use gallon jugs for oil changes and quart
bottles for top up. Second, if possible store the oil in the case and
in the engine room. Take a bottle out, pour the oil into the engine
and put the empty back into the case as dunnage - when you've used up
the oil you'll have the empties all boxed up for the trip up the dock
to the dumpster. In the meantime, the cardboard case is protecting the
bottles from 'sharp things' and the empties are keeping the full
bottles from flopping around. If that won't work for you, keep your
loose bottles in a locker but take steps to keep them from being
bounced around. If you suspect that there may be 'sharp things'
lurking then line the locker in question with something for
protection - a sorbent pad would serve very well but even a few layers
of newspaper would get the job done.

Storably yours,

Alex