I wanted to get some way oil into my HM-45 mill, and couldn't find the old oil can in the shed mess. So I took a chance and raced down to the nearest Repco to get one of their Chinese 500 ml cans, rather than waiting for the slow post from everywhere nowadays. I did read reviews of all these cheap oil cans, and realised they were likely to be terrible, but I was in a hurry.

Oilcan1.jpg
Got it home and filled it up, and of course it would not pump at all. Nothing even remotely like movement in the oil.

Having removed its barcode label and filled it with oil, I was stuck with this thing, so decided to see what was wrong. On turning the mechanism over, I could see the worst-shaped hole for the little ball that was supposed to seal against the bottom of the brass piston. Typical of a twist drill through thin sheet metal.
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I tried a few things like running a reamer through the hole before remembering something I had read from George Thomas about twenty years ago on fixing leaking ball valve seats for steam engines. So I sat the brass piston in a hole of a 1-2-3 block, dropped the little ball back in, and hit it hard through a piece of handy 1/4" bar a few times. Re-assembled it, and it pumped beautifully. Still a bit of a leak through the bottom ball, but plenty of pressure out of the spout.

I know you can get these things even cheaper through Ali Express and Bangood, so hope this helps if anyone else gets a dud one as I did.

Cheers

Al