Grrrrr B&Q Grrrrrr

[Doctor Drivel]

Matt, no. Just reading inane babble from you.

[Steve Firth]

You don't need proof of purchase, HTH.

[Mathew Newton]

It certainly does help though - saves a whole load of aggro (particularly in the OP's situation).

[Dave]

It's the oil that kills the free sliding motion. No matter how clean you think the slide bearing is, there is always some crud left behind and the oil will pick up any residue/dust etc. that is around.

Try using lock lubricant. It is graphite powder in a small puffer bottle.

Though I have been in engineering since 1961, I did spend some time in the textile industry, on the maintenance side. Mainly in cotton spinning. Anyone who has worked on these machines will tell you how difficult it is to get a properly shaped bobbin, when the frame that rises and falls to provide this shape gets contaminated with dross.

The ring frame is the part that carries the spinning rings.

This is carried up and down the winding area, by what used to be known as pokers. They were steel shafts and ran through plain cast iron bearings. These bearings could be as clean as could be, but you would get stickiness, if there was not some amount of powdered graphite on them.

Colloidal suspensions were tried, but they were never as successful as powder.

Dave