It's a Zerk

Its A Zerk

Inspecting and admiring the 11/4-sized brass pioneer wagons in Omaha last weekend at Pioneer Courage Park, I noticed the grease buckets hanging on the rear axles. Of course at that time, axles were wooden as were wheels, and required greasing to keep from wearing out quickly. I suppose the grease buckets, or animal horns in some cases, were a mess, which is why they were hung outside and out of the way, where they couldn’t befoul everything. By the time I came along, about 75 years later, we had more durable iron axles and roller bearings. Many of these still required daily greasing.

I was telling Lynn that one of the things farm kids knew was where the grease fittings were to be found on every tractor of any type, every combine or swather, every bailer, every manure spreader, and every implement that could be raised and lowered, either hydraulically or by hand. Combines had tons of them. A lot of arcane knowledge. As a 14 year old, I was expected to crawl under machinery and lie on my back greasing any thing and everything up before it was used. My dad was already in his late 50s, and though he could still do it, it was easy and painless for me.

So I knew about zerks. Zerks were invented by Oscar Ulysses Zerkowitz, an Austrian emigrant, in 1929. A zerk is a one way, high pressure ball valve, that allows you to inject grease from a grease gun. You pump the gun until you see a film of grease squeezing out from around the axle or part that you want to be coated. Grease guns have a nipple that fits tightly over the zerk, with a pop. Twisting it a bit detaches the gun. The zerks come in various configurations from straight on, up to 45 degrees, allowing you to get into some tight corners, where the gun wouldn’t fit. The barrel of the gun is angled which keeps the pumping action free and your knuckles un-banged. An innovation was a rubber hose that allowed the nipple to bend any direction from the gun. Almost all cars, boats, trains and machinery use zerks. When Zerkowitz died in the 1980s, an estimated 20 billion zerks were in use.

When I was young, every year or two, a traveling grease and lubricant salesman showed up, and my dad would buy various oils and greases, as well as a 55 gallon drum of axle grease. There was a pump that could be taken off the empty drum and attached to the new one, allowing you to directly fill the gun. We had several guns, which all had to be filled before heading to the field, especially if you were greasing up a lot of equipment.

By the mid-60s or so, grease came in cartridges, and the guns were re-designed to accept those, rather that being pumped full from bulk. This resulted in empty cartridges and caps filling up the truck bed and generally adding to the trash all around.

Also, sealed bearing were invented. They are pre-lubricated and because they are sealed, they need no maintenance. They were first used in really hard to reach places.

I speculate about how those wooden axles and wheels were lubricated. Beef tallow was carried in those wooden buckets or horns. I imagine you had to remove the wheels and slather it on, but I have read that slices of fat back could also be placed between the axles and wheel hubs. I don’t think jacks were a portable thing in the 1850s, but it seems you could block up an axle, dig down below the wagon wheel to take away the load, remove the wheel and grease it, then slip it back on. Apparently large wagon trains did carry jacks, and sometime even had a wheelwright who could do repairs. A friend points out that a stout pole could be used to lever an axle high enough to slip a wheel off. I think this had to be done every 30 miles or so. You could do one axle (two wheels) of an evening and the other the next evening.

This makes me wonder about chariots and such. The Egyptians use animal fats. The Romans used olive oil.

I hope this helps prepare you for an AI post-industrial world.