Cleaning Metal Skirt Tubes

I wouldn't have given 1000 to 1 one odds of this working... Figured paint would have been a goner in about 15 seconds...

I have/had a couple ugly tubes in my first Warco I wanted to clean but was afraid any rubbing was going to remove paint, so I decided to use a test tube that was already missing most of it's paint... Coated it with Naval Jelly, gave it a couple minutes and most corrosion was gone while paint appeared unharmed... WOW...

So getting brave, I put the 6SQ7 to the test and it came out almost like new, unbelievable(sorry no before picture)... The 6K7 in same radio is a Raytheon that has very light orange paint, was barely readable through the corrosion(was somewhat worse than 6SQ7)... After cleaned it's at least 97% better, a second treatment would no doubt improve the gloss but I decided to quit while I was ahead...

Grungy 6K7 with cleaned 6SQ7...



6K7 after cleaning...

Yow! He who dares, wins!

Who'da thunk it?

I have now used this method, and thank again, it worked great! It just so happened that I purchased an Emerson AA5 with all octal tubes, and the 12SQ7 has a metal base that was pretty ugly. This cleaned it up nicely and left the original paint or ink.