Cleaning valve tubes - removing oxidation deposits - Page 2

Tubes are pretty tough. I once had a nice bag of 6SN7's dropped onto a glass counter by the owner of the store. I was pissed but he laughed and said he was sorry but he used to work at a tube factory and they would throw the large boxes of tubes across the floor.

Gloves for tubes? No, as mentioned above these tubes don't need that. They don't get hot enough to cause problems and again for the most part they are tough. I have tubes from the 1920's both NOS and used that are going strong with excellent vacuum and they have been handled and bounced all over the place.

But you can rock it back and forth as you pull up, right? Otherwise, these things won't come out.

Sincerely,
Toob Noob

The question is how much rocking back and forth .... and the answer is as little as possible.

With a little practice you get so you learn to pull the tube almost straight up = vitrtually no rocking .... when removing a tube. Pull as straight up as you can and no bent contacts and no chipped or cracked sockets is your reward.

Some Use...

Some use WD-40 and a tooth brush to remove oxidation, followed by ProGold.

Jamato8 uses the eraser tip of a pencil - says it works quite well.

I'm tempted to try...

Eagle One "Never Dull" Cotton Wadding Wheel Cleaner/Polish (or similar) - it works like magic to clean aluminum wheels - it should work very well on tube pins. Avoids lots of rubbing / work.

Eagle One, pituee. . . I used to be a national sales rep for them, back in another life. I think the owner sold the company though. You can tell I didn't have a good experience with them. I sold more product for them than any person as one of two national sales reps and there was over 80 field reps. I still outsold all of them.

Anyway, keep it simple.

I've used isopropyl alcohol to clean the tube pins with good results. Much cheaper probably less toxic than the specialty products too.

I was wondering about which product from the Caig range to use, there's the D series and the gold series...

 

If you look at the pdf about which to choose, it suggests D series for used tubes with visible oxidation, and the gold for new tubes

And it looks like the D series is stronger.

 

http://store.caig.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.188/.f

 

But most people recommend the gold series - is this strong enough?

Thanks!