Re: It was something we used to do in the 60s & 70s
"The fumes at melted away a lot of the contacts on the motherboard!"
We had a pretreatment for carbon-dating samples that involved a final wash with dilute HCl (I can't think why!) followed by drying in a large drying cabinet. The cabinet got progressively less effective. We eventually found the fan blades had been eaten away. The cabinet was just sitting in the open lab, no fume cupboard.
We had another, small drying cabinet in a different lab. This was used to dry off benzene which was the final wash for pollen samples for microscopy so the amounts were small. One day SWMBO decides to make some meringues using ANalar sucrose (because it was available) and used the little cabinet as an oven.
The things you could get away with before elfin safety.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
