Goops, Lubes & Soaps

Goops, lubes and soaps

Phil Wood hand cleaner is by far the best we've ever used. It's amazing. Get it, and you'll never want to be without it. A case could be made that it is absolutely perfect in every way, and exceeds all expectations. Even if this review has just raised them sky-high. 

Pine tar soap is excellent, too. Most women hate the smell, but it doesn't linger on you, so they won't know. Here's a tip you may not take, but it works nevertheless:

Shower, lather up your arm pits with pine tar soap, scrub-a-dub-dub really good, then rinse and swirl the bar of soap around there briefly again, and this time don't rinse. Leave it there, and that's the only BO juice you need. You won't stink no matter what. The armpits of your clothes won't stink. All's well, and no, when you sweat, you won't smell like Pine Tar soap. You just won't smell, period.

Lanolin it works fine, smells great, and it's kind of neat that you can use it for skin lotion and bike parts. It's no substitute for grease in bearings, because it gets stiff in the cold and runs in the heat. For general metal-to-metal contact, though, it's as good as anything. For inside the head tube before pressing in cups, no problem. For pedal threads, no problem. For stems inside steerers, no problem. Same with seat posts. Come to think of it, lanolin works great lots of places. Mainly, we offer it because we're wool people and it comes from sheep.

Bicycle grease: Nothing on a bicycle moves fast by industrial standards, or gets mucky by industrial standards. So nearly any grease will do. We prefer light-colored greases, because you can tell when they're dirty. There are "grease folks" out there, who are resolute in their opinions about grease, but we're not among them! In the shop, we use Phil grease, which is dark bottle green, and some whitish grease, too. Phil says its grease is really good, and we tend to believe that, but for metal-to-metal contact points that don't move, or things that require light lubrication only, any grease will do. We're happy to have Phil grease in Phil parts, though.