Tube Prep - The OCD Stuff

So now I've got a bunch of holes in my tubes, thanks to some ridiculous notion that it might provide some potential future benefit.  That means it's time to put it all back together in the jig, and start welding it up, right?  Well, that would be one option.  But there's that nagging little voice in my head, convincing me it would be irresponsible to put this car together with tubes that have so much crap inside of them.

First up is getting rid of that nasty burr on the inside edge of each hole.

Now I could stop there, but why half-ass it?  I'm not going to be satisfied until I've made a complete ass of myself.  So I stuff a half sheet of paper towel in the end of the tube and use my highly specialized multipurpose tool to swab it through like cleaning the barrel of a rifle.

Most of the grime comes out with the first swabbing.

And the second swabbing leaving it clean as a whistle.  Come to think of it, whistles get pretty gross...Hopefully cleaner than a whistle.

Then it's just a quick wipe down on the outside with Acetone, bevel all of the edges on the grinding wheel, final smoothing around all of the edges with the wire wheel, and putting it all back together in the jig as shown below in the picture that is not-at-all* the same picture used in my previous post.

My only thought for next time is swabbing the tubes before drilling the holes, rather than after deburring them.  I'm not exactly the most skilled with a deburring tool, such that even with the big bits of burr gone there can still be just a little bit left poking up that can snag the paper towel a bit.

* "exactly"