Need to oil your shredder but are appauled at the prices for “original/branded” shredder oil. I’ll try unravel some of the marketing bullshit around what it is and what you can use as a cheap alternative.
Separating the marketing & bullshit from reality.
The website mybinding.com in a blog post titles Do NOT use these Oils for your Paper Shredder, states that you should not use “Olive, vegetable, & canola oil”, as they may gum up your machine and later the author goes on to claim that the “Top 3 Best Oils for Paper Shredders”, her number 1 pick is “Fellowes POWERSHRED Shredder Lubricant”.
But when you take a look at the MSDS for Fellowes Shredder Oil you find it is, drummroll, Canola Base Lubricating Oil with a Viscosity SUS at 100F of 190 which equates to roughly ISO VG 46.
CAS Number 120962-03-0 is Canola Oil
Viscosity Grading Systems
Huh! you say. This dictates how thick or thin the oil is and hence how well it runs and potentially penetrates. There is a great chart here.
Sabolt Universal Seconds (SUS) The ISO (International Standards Organization) viscosity grade system uses numbers ranging from 2 to 1500 to classify industrial liquid lubricants.
Shredmaster Shredder Oil is a synthetic oil.
MSDS – Material Safety Data Sheets
Doing a search in Google for MSDS Shredder Oil will list a bunch of oils and what they contain.
| CAS no. | EC / List no. | Description |
| 64742-54-7 | 265-157-1 | Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated heavy paraffinic |
| 120962-03-0 | 601-748-6 | Canola Oil |
| 68515–33–3 | 271-074-1 | Benzene, mono-C10-12-alkyl derivs., fractionation bottoms, heavy ends |
| 9003-29-6 | Copolymer isobutylene/ butene |
ANTI-WEAR ISO32 Hydraulic Oil