Hey guys Brain & Terry here! Today we are going be looking at grease guns. If you’re like us, at some point, you’ve struggled to either get the grease gun on the zerk, off the zerk, or get the grease to go in the zerk. It can be frustrating to say the least…haha. Well, Terry figured something out that has changed all of that for us. A little while back, Terry had one of those lightbulb moments and realized that the end of the grease gun actually turns. When it turns, it controls the spread of the jaws inside the fitting. So, let’s take a little closer look at what this means.
First, we’ll drill a hole in a piece of wood (a cedar shim for this example).
Next, let’s install a grease zerk in that hole.
Now, if you place the grease gun fitting over the zerk, you will either notice that it’s too tight to go on or too loose and flops around. Try twisting the end of the fitting one direction or the other. If it’s an older grease gun, you may need a wrench to loosen the end up so you can easily twist it. When you do this, it will either open or close the jaws in the fitting. This will allow you to get a secure fit on the zerk to pump your grease. This also allows you to have both hands free instead of having to hold the fitting on the zerk with one hand, or having someone else hold it while you pump the grease.
You could easily pull hard enough to break the shim, but you get the point, the fitting is not popping off of the zerk. It’s a solid connection that makes the process so much less frustrating.
Next, you simply twist the end again to loosen it up, pop if off the zerk, and move on to your next fitting. It really is very simple. Let’s take a closer look at the fitting.
As you can see, the jaws (indicated by the nail) are slightly spread out inside the fitting. This allows them to slip over the shoulder on the zerk.
Once you twist it and tighten them up, they close down to give you that secure fit. By doing this, it helps assure that the grease will go in the zerk instead of pumping out around it.
This is one of those simple things that somehow gets overlooked. To be honest, it’s probably in the instructions…but who reads those??? Haha. Hopefully this helped some of you with your future grease gun endeavors and maybe now you won’t avoid greasing the things that have been needing greasing. There are aftermarket options out there as well, that replace the end and give you a quick connect style lockup. These can be very helpful but aren’t always usable. It really varies with the situation. Doing this twist lock method works just fine for us.
We hope you guys and gals found this post to be helpful and entertaining. Be sure to check back soon as we keep moving forward on the property and share a some really cool tips we have learned along the way. Thanks for stopping by!