White lead & castor oil on prop shaft?

While attempting to distract myself from 8 hours of filing documents
on Friday, I Youtubed up the Republic / Air Corps training film on how
to field assemble the P-47 Thunderbolt. (Where I work, that's called
multi-tasking.) In the film, they describe coating the prop shaft of
the R-2800 with the "perscribed mixture" of white lead and castor oil
before installing the prop.

Just out of curiousity, how would someone comply with this procedure
now? Castol oil is easy enough to get, but white lead? Substitutes?
And what exactly does the white lead do? Does it act as a packing or
anti-corosive?

I've found that when restoring or reproducing vintage things,
attempting to find the correct materials is a real challenge, if not
impossible. When I built my Wright machine, the only easy materials to
find were the steel rod, sheet, and wire.

Harry Frey