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Hello folks, One of my pleasures in using old pens, is that I can do so without calling on modern industrial activity that is making Earth inhabitable. Second-hand pen, second-hand ink, and I can write without having given a cent of encouragement or means for modern companies to produce more wares at the cost of planet hospitality. And so it would annoy me to have to buy silicone grease for my fpens. I’ve been so far relying on a single gram of the product given to me years ago, to grease my pens, but my “stock” is running out. I am looking for an alternative, ideally a non-industrial one, for the pens I own and will own, which I am resolute for them all to be retractable pens entirely made of ebonite (the why of this is another subject.) I draw your attention on the fact that I am looking for a lubricant/fluid sealant for ebonite only. I know that the generality of lubricating products are harmful to some plastics and celluloid. But what is harmful to those, is not necessarily so to ebonite. Also, I will be only greasing threads that should not be in contact with ink (the cap thread, and the barrel one.) Therefore, the interaction between the alternative lube and plastics, celluloids, sacs, or inks, is not a concern. (It might be if I want to treat the cork seal with it, but I'll think about that later.) I also point out that the point is to lubricate threads, not ensure waterthightness. I think of beef and mutton tallow, pork lard, and beeswax. Tallow is the fat extracted by melting from the fat tissues of oxen or sheep; lard, that from swine. I obtain tallow by buying fat bits of meat from a butcher, dicing these, putting them in a pot in the oven to melt (in the oven, to prevent the bottom from burning, at it happens on stovetops,) letting it melt for a while, then dumping the load in a sieve. Pure fat flows from the sieve, and then, cooling, solidifies. Tallow is preconised on the original labels of callipers for greasing those, and I use it for all rubbing (not spinning) metal parts: threads, articulations, etc. Iron-based metallic materials are not affected by contact with it, while it keeps them from corrosion; and it never stiffens (contrarily to neatsfoot oil, which I used for a while for bearings, until I discovered that that oil, by contact with metal, eventually turned to a honey-coloured and honey-textured mess.) On copper allows though, tallow seems to encourage carbonatation and the formation of greenish stuff. As for beeswax, I suppose everyone is familiar enough with it to spare discoursing on it. I use it to lubricate the sole of my hand-driven wood planes. It too helps carbonatation of copper, it seems. Member Pen Nut suggests it might be a solution. How about on ebonite? Can someone tell me, from experience, if beef or mutton or pork fat, or beeswax, are safe on ebonite, or what it does to it—before I experiment by myself and deliver here the answer which I hoped to find? And, by the way, what did they use, in the olden days, to grease ebonite threads and moving parts (which were not only present in fountain pens, I assume, but sometimes in machinery,) before they had silicone grease?