[lukevanoort]

I don't know how bad your lathe is, but I have yet to run across something I can't clean with good 'ol isopropanol. If you can find a shop in your area with one of those nifty ultrasonic cleaning devices, it'd probably take care of the grime in no time. (At some point I'd like to try to build one of those, but it is probably a bit hard and unlikely that I will)