Cleaning a Big Dipper

[Grey Taylor]

I've had gasket lacquer in my Big Dipper tube for something like 12 years now. I just add to the lacquer level when it gets low.
Lately I've begun to see occasional flecks of color where there should be no flecks of color after I've dipped the shafts. Additionally, way down in the bottom of the tube, where the shafts don't reach, was about an inch of dark colored matter. It was apparent that it was time to clean out the tube to rid it of contaminants.
It's not easy to dump out about a quart of gasket lacquer but that's what I did. Afterwards I poured in acetone to dissolve the remaining lacquer.
To make a long story short, I used about a half quart of acetone all told to clean out the tube. But that dark matter remained in the bottom.
I tied a piece of rag around a cane garden stake and shoved it down the tube, kind of like a poor man's rifle cleaning rod. That's when I discovered that there was still about three inches of lacquer down there.
After two application of cleaning rod, more acetone, and a final scraping of the bottom corners with a ramin dowel, I think it's finally clean.
So I have about three hours into this, most of a quart of acetone, and considerable frustration. Now I look at the catalog and see that Big Dipper tubes are less than $13. So when it comes time to clean this again in another ten years, I'm just going to get a new one.

Guy