Have had more grease stains than anti-seize stains but I guess I am generally more careful or something. Never ruined grease but did have one of our interns ruin some carbon paste by drilling near an open container but that was not totally intentional just a lack of thinking and spatial awareness.

I use really purely with titanium stuff and it does the job and doesn't cause any issues for me but I can see where it could cause issues if you got it in your bearings.

My bikes aren't really toys but I get it people love to call them toys and demean them that way so they can also demean those that work on them and are around them. Not necessarily saying you are doing that but it is common enough around here and elsewhere.

They aren't toys, but my point is that they aren't high speed industrial machines. Bike people like to take from other industries, forgetting that our low load, low rpm, low speed, low temp machines don't benefit at all from ceramics, anti-seize, bearing pre-load, etc. And there isn't any galling either - that is a friction effect, not something bike parts can make happen. Anti-seize is just to help prevent galvanic corrosion.


You have interns at a bike shop?

I tell you the one place I do need antisieze - in the adjustment cone of this bugger.

https://amzn.eu/d/1Eep33R

In the context of threads like this one, where a newcomer is asking basic questions, it's probably best to avoid using jargon such as "thread pick-up" that even experienced bike mechanics might not have encountered. I've never seen it before, and I've been working on bikes since I began building wheels in the mid-'60's.

FYI, a search using the term first returned information about sewing machine bobbins (problems with guiding sewing thread through the machine).

I then added "metal fasteners" to the search term and got results describing electric guitar pickups.

Can't help speculating that "thread pick-up" was made up by someone in a manufacturing plant somewhere and used only there.

I've never heard the term, but I grasp that they are talking about galling.

the use of the term galling is even more galling

fwiw I think “thread pickup” is pretty intuitive to anyone who’s ever used a bolt

I've had stainless steel bolts gall if dry threads, more often than anything else.

Here's a serious question and contradiction:

Well above (I think in this thread, or another) was advice to grease the seatpost. Reply was, won't that make it slip? Answer was no, the clamping pressure will squeeze out or overcome the grease and hold fine.

Now, will the same happen with grease on threads? I don't know, but that may be one of the reasons that anti-seize contains fine metal powder, that will remain at that pressure interface, better than grease.

Most of the stuff on bikes is low stressed. But those 5mm rack bolts are under enough load that they break occasionally, and gall if not lubed.

Not intuitive to someone asking the kinds of questions the OP is asking. In the context of a thread started by someone seeking the most basic information imaginable, the use of an opaque term that none of us experienced mechanics have ever encountered verges on the punitive.

In my days working as an editor, I usually let authors get away with show-offy jargon like that if the readers were certain to be peers working in the same field, but the term would probably still get a query, more diplomatically worded than what would first have occurred to me, i.e., "What the hell?"

Why the hell would any bike mechanic insert a dry stainless bolt into a bike? To manufacturer a ridiculous example of galling where it would never otherwise exist?

Anti-seize is a range of products. If you think graphite anti-seize is going to act as thread locker, you have another thing coming. The graphite is going to act like little bearings, not little teeth. Either way you are screwing with how the part was designed to engage thread by inserting unnecessary particulate into that thread engagement for no reason.

Anti-seize is not thread locker. Thread locker is not necessary on properly tightened hardware.

Use the grease the manufacturer intended and you will get the kind of torque the manufacturer intended, which is the amount of torque that will hold the bolt from slipping. It will prevent galling and corrosion in all but the most reactive pairings.


Stop trying to outsmart a perfectly useful system. People have been using bikes very, very hard for their entire history. Has anyone ever heard of racers famously losing because their grease assembled bikes unscrewed themselves?


These threads always present such a mishmash of "wouldabout" baloney that it is no wonder new home mechanics get so confused. Greased bolts and seatposts don't slip - they also don't corrode or gall. Use grease nearly everywhere. The only exception I can think of is the handlebar/stem junction - which would also likely work fine with grease, but we needn't worry about it because there simply isn't enough surface area there to cause them to corrode together. Every other bolt, spline, pressed part, etc gets grease, and always has.

This isn't rocket science, and bikes are not rockets. Use grease.