budgie wrote:

(snip)

May well have been toluene. It was often used as a cleaner in all sorts of
areas, some as pedestrian as the T/R/S plugs on old lamp-signalling telephone
switchboards. Unfortunately proved to be a carcinogen and was banned, but it
WAS used to clean a myriad of hardware in a myriad of situations.

Banned? Perhaps from use as a general solvent in assembly areas, but if you walk
into most hardware stores (such as Ace), you can buy it in gallons in their paint
sections... Pretty cheap too!

It's at least a bit amazing that one industry may ban an item, yet another still
provides it...
It seems that you can't purchase lacquer paint for an automobile anywhere at this
point, yet can still buy gallons of lacquer thinner (and lacquer based paints for
wood) at the local hardware store... sigh...

--Rick AH7H