Repro WS No 19 Cdn battery box

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by Mike Kelly

Me. I scribbled those drawings on some scrap paper. The batteries were found in the Sydney road Coburg yard.

There were Aust. pattern wireless battery boxes which look . A ham I was on air with one night, he was a signaler in Syria . He said they rebuilt the wireless batteries every three months , they used a kero blow lamp to melt the tar sealer out, install new plates , fill with fresh acid .

It wasn't quite that simple, the batteries were returned to REME for repair when they reached a certain level of capacity (or suddenly failed). The "Battery Shop" would then test them rather thoroughly and replace any faulty parts, either plates and separators if distorted/sulphated up, or complete cells and containers if badly damaged/cracked. It was not a nice place to work, everyone got a milk ration of 1 pint per day to reduce the risk of lead poisoning.

There are various EMERs on batteries (and the WW2 vintage battery shop manual, I think, with a photo of the "scrap dump" and a plea to treat batteries properly to prolong their life) in the WS19 group archive. (The originals are in one of my gazillion boxes, somewhere....)

Cells could be 'pulled' by centre-drilling the ends of the lead connector bars on top of the battery, then using a counterbore tool to separate the bar and
leave most of the connector post intact. The pitch (Chattertons Compound) was then softened with a steam hose, and the cell extracted from its case.
(Obviously the entire battery had been drained of acid and thoroughly washed out before you started this!) The plate assembly could then be refurbished/rebuilt with new plates and separators as required, then reinserted and sealed with more compound. Finally the connector bars would be dropped back into place and fresh lead poured in to make the connection - using a ladle much like those seen for hand-casting bullets. The battery would then be refilled, allowed to stand for a while for the plates to absorb the acid, then charged and tested before being reissued.

(I read the manual while scanning it for the archive, and a lot of it appears to have stuck!)

Chris.