If you really want to do it yourself, you ought to be drilling your own oil well.

Doesn't everybody ??
Good skills for the coming apocalypse.

No wonder people roll their eyes when they hear I'm a cyclist...

Use these rubber toy gun pellets and skip the grease altogether........

Oil and glue didn't work at all for me. In my case, wood glue; I'm sure some glues out there would work.

My solution was to use paraffin candle wax, mixed with mineral oil. As far as I know paraffin is petrol-derived so it should be inorganic and stable. I've often used oil to dissolve spilled wax on surfaces, so it made sense to mix them instead for the purpose of making an extremely viscous oil - or (what I believe to be) grease.

I didn't measure, but I think between 5:1 or 10:1 oil:wax, depending on ambient temperature. And I assume you could use motor oil instead of mineral oil. In any case, a little bit of old (inorganic) candle wax, melted and mixed into a liter of oil should make a pretty cheap pot of grease that I guess would last a long time and never degrade.

I came here looking for DIY grease for guitar tuning machines. But I'm also a biker. Thanks for the ideas.

We were having some fun with the original poster at the time. But since you mention wax, know that some people use hot wax on bicycle chains. The basic process is to degrease the chain, heat it up with the wax in a crock pot on high, and hang it to drip and cool. Because it's not liquid, once it's cool it does not allow in contamination. There are special formulas that add moly or teflon or a little oil or kerosene to make it soft when cool, but some people do it with just canning wax. This is primarily for people who are training high mileage on road bikes, to the tune of ten thousand miles a year, and using more expensive chains. For an average recreational rider it seems like a bit too much work. There are a few products that have wax in a solvent or an emulsion but they don't really work great by comparison. https://cyclingtips.com/2018/03/fast...ves-you-money/

A commercial chain wax product: https://moltenspeedwax.com/

Some stuff about chain wear: https://cyclingtips.com/2019/12/the-...ciency-tested/ Maybe not all that relevant to musical instruments but there are a few good take-aways. Tight tolerances make things slower but more durable. Hard plating is good because it wears harder but various repellent coatings that are supposed to keep the chain clean also repel lube

Use the white juice from the common dandelion!