On 20 Jun 2006, Colin wrote: > You can buy rat poison quite easily but liquid paraffin?
Find a friendly vet - there are several amongst society members. They use it by the gallon. The amounts needed just for maintenance are pretty small, and a piping vet would probably understand your needs more readily than the average teenage pharmacy assistant. The same thing is happening with citric acid, required for some soldering processes. It used to be obtainable at pharmacies, and DIY beer shops, but apparently it's used by drugs people, and it's now difficult, but not impossible to obtain. People who work in university chemistry departments are also sometimes able to provide odd substances in small quantity - industrial methylated spirit (colourless and without the stink) for cleaning up inappropriate oils, for instance. On the original subject I'd be wary of cotton buds for bore cleaning lest they shed unwanted hairs in their passage - I find this is occasionally an issue when using them to clean oil-based bogeys out of finger holes. Julia To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
