Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

Another beautiful, warm, sunny day, so these two KNOBS received their top coat of Armor Coat, Gloss Misty Grey paint this morning, so they will be ready for reinstallation on the Sender front panel when the time comes.

David

[David Dunlop]

I finally got around to disassembling the central core of this SOCKETS, Antenna, to give it all a good cleaning. Good thing I did, as there was a lot of sooty grease packed between the Bakelite fitting and the central assembly.

Once cleaned and polished, I reassembled it for reinstallation on the Sender panel down the road, once the missing pair of #6 external tooth lock washers have been replaced. I should be able to source them locally, in spite of the current lockdown we are in.

It was interesting to notice the plating on the brass central socket was worn away, leaving the shiny brass when cleaned. The similar brass socket on the COIL, Aerial Tuning also shows a high degree of wear on the plating with and lot of brass visible. However, the ones on the three receivers are essentially factory mint in condition. They simply never got used over the service life of this 52-Set to wear them down.

David

[David Dunlop]

Good outdoor painting weather is rapidly disappearing here these days, so I took advantage of a chance to strip the old paint and varnish coats off this item yesterday and get it ready for priming.

I was surprised at how bright and shiny the original metal work was underneath the layers of paint.

Originally, the interior of these COVERS was left in a bare, plated metal state, but traces of overspray through the wire screens was still evident around the inner rim. Over the years, moisture had puddled on the lower inner rim and some surface rusting needed to be cleaned away. For the sake of protecting this inner surface in the future, I have decided to prime it, but only finish coat the exterior surfaces.

For such a small part, the extent to which it underwent spot welding it worth noting on the exterior view. You can see a lot of spot weld dimples all the way around the front rim. I am thinking a number of these welds were first applied to hold the wire screen securely in place. Then the inner C-Ring fitting was installed and also spot-welded in place, to prevent the open rim of the wire screen from moving about and perhaps unravelling.

If you browse back to Post 285, you will see what this COVERS looked like when first removed from the Sender panel.

David

[David Dunlop]

The COVERS, Metal for the Sender front panel has now been primed inside and out.

Hopefully the weather will hold long enough this week to get the finish coat applied to the outside of the COVERS now.

David

[David Dunlop]

The COVERS for the Sender, with its final exterior coat of paint.

Now to start working on the last major repair challenge before reassembly of the front panel to the Sender can begin.

David

[David Dunlop]

While waiting for paint to dry, and taking advantage of the last really nice warm weather here last weekend, I spent some time in the back garden reading up on vintage varnishes. I was frankly amazed at the amount of information that is available, and it is constantly being added to by research teams around the world involved in art, musical instrument and furniture restoration and preservation work.

In simplistic terms, a varnish consists of a solvent medium and resins dissolved therein, with or without the addition of lesser organic ingredients that influence the drying time, finish gloss or hardness/flexibility of the finished product. All vintage varnishes will colour, or darken, naturally over time and some compounds can be added to the mix to produce particular shades of yellow or orange with the initial application. Artists like Monet and Van Gogh, were aware of the natural darkening of varnishes and typically painted in lighter tones of paint to allow for the varnish darkening in the finished painting.

The three common solvents were linseed oil, tang oil and walnut oil, and if a faster drying time was needed, turpentine was used. The vast majority of resins came from conifer trees, pines and firs.

Where it got interesting was the locations for the most popular resin supplies - Malaysia, Indonesia and several of the smaller Greek Islands. It was also noted that the Canada Balsam Fir could also provide a good resin for varnish, but it had a tendency to darken rather quickly.

So it looks like, if the timeline for the fall of the above noted sources of resins during the early part of the war was compared to wartime wireless production, one would expect more late war wireless equipment to have varnishes made from the readily available Canada Balsam Fir, and these would yellow up, or darken, much more noticeably than the earlier war production items.

David

[David Dunlop]

This is the first step that I have thought my way through in regards to being able to reset the four digit indicator for the 7 – 16 MC PA TUNING, COUNTERS.

I need to know the centre point of the indicator dial when it is mounted to the front panel of the Sender, without the front panel being installed, as it is impossible to work on these COUNTERS with the front panel in place. So I need to create a temporary set of x-axis and y-axis reference points.

I did this by first setting up small strips of masking tape on the top and sides of the chassis, where the requited axes would be located. I then reattached the front panel to the chassis with the two upper corner screws and marked the relevant axes marks with an adjustable square, on the side tapes. When the front panel was removed once more, the location marks on the sides were transferred to the tape strips on the front of the chassis.

In the second photo, you can see the two COUNTERS temporarily blocked in their correct positions. Note that although the 1.75 – 8 MC PA TUNING indicator (on the left in this orientation) reads a correct ‘0000’, the 8 – 16 MC PA TUNING indicator on the right has the lowest digit stuck at ‘3/4’. In this position, the Tuning Coil and its related flexible coupling attached to the COUNTERS, are all correctly oriented, as is the COUNTERS itself. What I have to sort out is the best means of keeping the COUNTERS in that position while disconnecting the two sections of the gear drive on it from each other. If I can do that, then I can reset the indicator dial to ‘0000’ and carefully reconnect the two sections of gears, thereby locking the dial back into its correct reading when in its correct final position for reattaching to the front panel.

More on this as I sort it out.

David