Cleaning Rose Chambers (a.k.a. Newt Chambers)
1. Disassemble chambers: dispose of coverslips in broken glass container, put screws in a designated container, and put all front and back pieces and gaskets separately in a large beaker of hot water with a 30:1 concentration of general lab soap (we use Fisher's Versa-Clean). If chambers are used only a few at a time over an extended time, you do not need to change the water each time chamber parts are added.

2. Immediately before starting to wash the chamber parts, pour out the water and replace it with the same concentration of soapy water. NOTE: I recommend wearing gloves when washing newt chamber parts to keep your hands from getting sticky from the silicone grease, but there's no danger.

3. Always use either a new brush or one which has been used for cleaning newt chambers ONLY. This is VERY important.

4. Thoroughly scrub each piece to remove any remaining silicone grease. I have found it works best to scrub the pieces while they are submerged in the soapy water so that the brush doesn't get too "clogged" with grease. NOTE: Because you are removing a lot of silicone grease into the soapy water, it is a good idea to change the soapy water every so often-you can usually feel the water get sticky. This helps promote the removal of the grease from the chamber parts and keeps things from getting just generally sticky. Removing some of the grease from the brush by running the brush through some concentrated soap in your hand under the faucet every once in a while also helps improve the quality of the cleaning.

5. After scrubbing, quickly rinse each piece with fresh tap water (or dunk a couple times in a frequently refreshed beaker of fresh tap water) and place it in a medium sized beaker (we use a 1 L plastic tri-corner beaker)-the "rinsing beaker".

6. Continue cleaning the pieces (one by one) until the rinsing beaker is full.

7. Rinse the chamber pieces together by filling the rinsing beaker with water, shaking or swirling the beaker a bit to get as many surfaces exposed to the water as possible, and then pouring out the water. The following rinsing regiment, using this technique, is recommended: · Rinse with TAP WATER until there are no suds left (or at least 10 times if there seem to be a few persistent suds) · Then rinse 10 times in TAP WATER · Rinse 10 times in DOUBLE DISTILLED of DEIONIZED WATER OR · Rinse 3 time in DISTILLED WATER · Rinse 8 times in DOUBLE DISTILLED of DEIONIZED WATER If in doubt, rinse some more! You can't rinse too much, but if you don't rinse enough, residual soap will kill your cells L.

8. Pour off as much of the water from the last rinse as possible.

9. On a clean piece of bench paper, lay each piece out individually to dry. I found that if you shake each piece once before laying it down, therefore removing some of the excess water, they dry quicker.

10. Allow the pieces to dry overnight.

11. Once the pieces are dry, I find the pieces stay clean longer if they are kept in stacks, each stack containing only one part (front, back, or gasket), until they are used or wrapped for autoclaving.