His first instinct when he has a problem — rather than seek my advice — is to reach for a can. He has them littered all over the house and the shed — and it’s a guessing game to figure out what he’s going to use it for next.
He once told me WD-40 has its own fan club. Its members have suggested more than 2000 different uses for the spray, from cleaning bird droppings off the car to unsticking Lego blocks.
It has been used by the police to free a naked burglar from an air-conditioning shaft and a Thai bus driver to extract a boa constrictor from the engine compartment.
The Boss tells me it was invented by American Iver Lawson at his home in 1953. Iver sold it for just $500 to the Rocket Chemical Company, who needed it as a rust preventative for the skin of Atlas missiles: these were the first inter-continental ballistic missiles and had to be rust and corrosion-free, and ready to use at short notice.
But Rocket Chemical staff soon started nicking cans, hiding them in their lunch boxes so they could take WD-40 home for all sorts of useful purposes — as a cleaner, a lubricant, a penetrant and a water displacer. It wasn't long before the company twigged and it was made available to consumers.
Iver used the principle of Water Displacement to arrive at his formula and was finally satisfied with his result after the 40th try — which is where the WD-40 name comes from.
The formula still remains a secret: it was never patented, since the company would have had to disclose the ingredients. The Rocket Chemical Company later became the WD-40 company and listed on the stock exchange in 1972.
It set up an Australian subsidiary in 1987, appointing local travelling salesman Garry Ridge as managing director; by 1997 Mr Ridge was chief executive of the whole company and ran it for 25 years from California, retiring a couple of years ago, by which time sales exceeded US$70 million.
He told the Financial Review when he retired that he had sold his blue and yellow cans in 72 countries and delivered shareholder returns of nearly 1400 per cent — twice the return of the S&P 500.
The Boss must be helping those shareholder returns because he goes through a lot of it over the Christmas break and January. That’s the time when he’s fixing things he’s put off during the year, from squeaky door hinges and sticky door locks to stuck zippers and cleaning up rusted tools.
But he loves it most of all as a lubricant — if something needs to rotate, spin, slide, turn, lift, zip, open, close or hinge, WD-40 does the trick.
He sprays it on the trailer hinges, ratchets, safety chains and U-bolts, the garden taps and hose fittings, his bike chain and the mower wheels. He tried to use it on me when I picked up some tree sap on my fur from the wattle grove but I backed well away from him until he came to his senses and cut it out.
It gets sprayed on his pruning shears to stop vegetation from sticking to them; he sprays it on his paintbrushes before putting them away for next time. He uses it to get permanent marker off the whiteboard (and other places after the grandchildren have been around) and he sprays it on the car grill to get the insects off.
Next thing he’ll be cleaning his teeth with it. Woof!
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