[HBR] Cleaning New Old Stock Tube Sockets.

[JMarsh1014 at aol.com]

In response to cleaning new old stock tube socket pins.  Most of the  
professional tube 
  era technicians use a product called De-oxit which comes in many  forms and 
quantities.
  A search on the Internet will find a outlet for you. I recently saw  it on 
the shelves at Radio
  Shack but I didn't look to see what grade it was. This will clean  down 
inside where the pins
  make contact. The outside where the wires get soldered can be  cleaned by 
using a very 
  hot pencil tip iron.Iron clad tipped soldering iron that is 45 watts  or 
greater , assuming you 
  are not using the cheap plastic or phenolic  sockets.  Use Kester or Ersin 
22 ga or smaller 
  5 core flux solder and flow it all over the pin.  It takes a  lot of it 
because the flux does the 
  cleaning along with the heat. If that re-tins portions of the  pins and you 
still have parts of the 
  pin that will not re-tin , then a dremel tool with the wire brush  disc can 
be used to go over 
  the badly oxidized area and then try a re-tin again. I have found  that 
alcohol helps during
  reflowing the pins. Using a wire brush with a dremel tool helps from  
removing the initial
  coating, instead of scraping with an abrasive object.  I use to  salvage a 
lot of cruddy tube
  sockets this way. It takes some time in some instances. If this  doesn't 
work, then the 
  oxidation has formed a coating much like what is used to anodize  metal 
surfaces during
  product manufacturing and will require a chemical reaction process  to 
unbond the coating
  as was mentioned by a fellow in the previous message. Some one  mentioned 
to me the
  other day along these lines, and said something about a product  called 
Tarnex, if I spelled
  it right. They said it works great on cleaning up metals and it is  cheap. 
I haven't used it
  myself, but it used to be advertised on TV, I think. Might be worth  
looking in to.  Enough
  of my yakkity yak.  73 KC5FMX  
 
  oxidized or coated