Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

This large gem was a surprise addition to the project a week ago when I got a call from Reg Hodgson, in Edmonton, that he had found a pair locally.

Only two coats of paint on the entire case. The first is the factory original flat or semi flat OD Green and a shadow of some of the stencil markings are still visible. Photo one. Hopefully more markings will be revealed when I get to restoring this case. This has all been done over in a gloss battleship grey overall with a funny green band on the right side of the lid. Photo two.

Several ‘cracks’ are visible in the wood, as a result of this case being stored in a damp environment at some point. Also, the putty filler used to cover the perimeter screw holes has fallen out of several of them. One of the really interesting bits about this case, however, is on the lid. The handle assembly is original. All factory rivets are still there as originally installed. But take a close look at the left side handle bracket. It is incorrect. It is a right hand bracket installed there. The correct bracket should be a mirror image of the right side bracket. Interesting mystery as to why that might have happened. Whoever installed it realized the bracket had to be flipped around for the handle to still function correctly.

The third photo shows the bottom of the case where a lot of putty plugs have fallen out and a large ‘crack’ runs full length across the bottom of the case. The wood is slightly humped at that point and I was rather concerned about that until I had a closer look at the left side of the case in Photo four. This photo shows the excellent finger jointing work done on this case. It also revealed another feature I had not expected, but upon discovering it, it made a lot of sense. What I though were cracks, are in fact the tongue and groove joints used to connect various strips of pine together to get the board sizes they needed to craft these cases. Animal glues would have been used in these joints and the damp conditions this box experienced were enough to dissolve the glue and allow the boards to separate a bit from one another and from the bottom edge of the case, resulting in the slight hump.

The last photo is of the interior of the case. The KimPak lining on the right side has some serious damage. My suspicion is the damp caused the padding to swell and it was subsequently pushed down a bit. Again, likely caused by dissolving glue. There would have been a newsprint paper label on the inside lid listing the case contents, this has fallen off and been lost. In the left side compartment, the wrap of KimPak around the sides has fallen off but the pad at the bottom is still in place.

My current thought for both cases so far, is to restore the exteriors and leave the interiors as original as possible, thereby saving a bit of their history.

As for the items inside the case? Reg tells me both cases he found had the same contents. More on those later.

David