Looting

When I was an apprentice we used a type of black putty that we moulded onto our machine tools making little dams etc to guide any wayward coolant back to the suds tray.I think it was called “looting”.Does anyone know if it still exists or if there’s a modern equivalent.Thanks

Don't know what it was, but you may have more success searching on 'luting' rather than 'looting'. Lute is a term for cement, sealant etc I think.

Robin.

Edited By Robin Graham on 18/03/2022 22:59:53

I suspect it was spelt "luting". Seems to be mostly a dental term these days but relates to puttys and cements so could have been one of those old school pre-silicone mastics.

Rod

Edit:  Too slow yet again

Edited By Roderick Jenkins on 18/03/2022 23:04:44

Thanks Robin,that makes a lot of sense.Learnt more on this site in 24 hrs than I have in last 10 years.Thanks again 👍

Thanks Rod. I used this in MoD workshops in the 80’s so it could have been from any era knowing their stores.Thanks for the heads up about luting, I never new the word existed till now.

Hi Michael,

My 1916 copy of Machinery's Handbook has a section on Lutes and Cements. They are variously described as water-proof, oil-proof,acid-proof and chlorine-proof. A general purpose lute recipe is:

"Plaster of paris, especially when mixed with asbestos, straw, flush trimmings, hair , broken stone etc."

The problem these days of course is the flush trimmings - you can't get them for love or money.

Regards,

Alan C.

I use plasticine for these.

Also good as a "damper" on long thin boring bars.

Jim

The term goes back a long way, Joseph Priestley invented a new lute that wouldn't contaminate his experiments on gases, and on one occasion noted that so much gas was produced that it broke his lute.

Brian G

Luting, a soft pliable sealer. Used in Instruments to seal threads and as a gasket on flat serfaces like binocular end plates.

it was found that some minute insects would bore into it, due to the fact it had bees wax component. Soon overtaken by soft pliable plastic seals.

As an aside many optical instruments that are sealed now have Nitrogen filling as it is inert and stops condensation.

I interesting word, lute. As well as the meaning we are discussing it is also a musica! Instrument and a u shaped tube fi!led with liquid used as a pressure relief valve. None of which seem connected to each other.

Rod

The musical instrument comes from the Arabic 'al 0ud'.

We still call makers of plucked instruments 'luthiers'.

I think we used Plasicene! It soon went black when it had some cast iron dust in it, it was also used for sticky pins etc.

Having been only a signed chit away from a MOD stores for most of my career, one of the materials we used to use was Apiezon Q compound - a black putty suitable for use in vacuum systems. I guess this could have been (mis) appropriated by the machinists. It was probably quite expensive but we would never know that.

Rod

Thanks Rod,maybe that’s what it was.Wouldn’t have been the only thing misappropriated by MoD apprentices. The beauty of cost-codes.

It sounds like the stuff my father used when he was a dockyard apprentice in the 1920s. They used to roll it into little balls and fire it at each other through bits of pipe. Apparently there was a neighbouring house with a roof window visible over the dockyard wall. When the window was open the challenge was to fire a pellet through the opening. Dad wondered if the occupants ever worked out where the little black pellets came from.

George

Do You still have oil filled glaziers putty used in sealing window glass to their frames? That is/was called glaziers putty over here. It is what We used to make coolant dams.

We still do, although PVC window frames and double/insulated glazing tend to be used with silicone rubbers.

I never realized that there was a word for the stuff that coolant dams are made with. I've got a couple of fairly significant plasticine ones on the surface grinder table. Some idiot (me) didn't get it properly leveled when grouting it into place. That'll be fixed if/when I get around to rebuilding it..

The first electricians shack I worked in as an apprentice overlooked the lorry’s waiting to be unloaded into the press shop steel stores, one of the electricians had a Tufnol tube blowpipe and the production floor had a ready supply of mastic materials for ammunition, the drivers sat in their cabs waiting to be unloaded made an irresistible target.

Mike