Adventures in lubricating my qiyi 15 puzzle (klotski)
Basically a list of lubes and the ways they don't work
Out of the box it turned amazing, but quickly slowed down. The original lubricant felt like a very thin oil but like, I don't know what it actually was.
I put in some PiLube White (which I bought because apparently it's like DNM 37, but it's not). It got a lot slower and stickier, like, the pieces felt like they were sort of glued to the base plate.
Cleaned it with a plain rag which was better than with the lube, but not as good as when it was new.
It got a bit slower over time again so I tried cleaning it with out of date medical alcohol. It made no improvement.
I cleaned it with rubbing alcohol and it was better than new!!!! This lasted about two days, before it started slowing down again.
I tried cleaning it with vodka, this also made no improvement.
I didn't have rubbing alcohol or cube lube on hand so I was like, why not try something really weird. I smeared a layer of vaseline over the base plate. It's slow, but not sticky. You might like the feel, but it's too slow for me. Some of the vaseline ended up between the pieces and this caused them to stick together and like, drag an extra piece along that you weren't expecting. So if you go this route, avoid getting it on the sides of the pieces.
Summary
My main recommendation would be to just clean it with rubbing alcohol when it gets slow. It feels amazing when it's totally clean like that.
Alcohol
Vodka: no effect
Medical: no effect
Rubbing: Excellent
Lubricants
PiLube White: bad
Vaseline: personal preference
Closing words
thanks Tumblr for the painful mobile editing experience.
