Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

From earlier Posts here, you will know the Flat White paint that arrived yesterday is to provide a reflective background strip on all the luminous paintwork coming up for the various knobs and markers on the 52-Set.

The red and the blue gloss, however, might be more of a mystery.

These two colours are for the Flick Indicator Dots on the Handles No. 72, as shown in the attached photo. As you can see, all these Handles on the Sender received a spray coat of varnish during their last overhaul, which has now turned that typical greenish yellow.

I had intended to redo the paintwork on all the Handles No. 72, but was initially hoping to save these two sets of original paint dots on the handles. These dots are all nicely placed in recessed holes, so a drop of Rubber Paper Cement placed on each would have protected them quite well, and would simply roll off with a little finger rub when the grey paint had cured. The problem was that very noticeable ridges would have been left behind around each dot from the build-up of a new layer of grey paint. It also eventually dawned on me these red and blue dots had also been covered with the aging varnish and, therefore, were no longer close to their original bright colours. This was confirmed when I compared a Handle No. 72 from the 52-Set to the original unvarnished ones on my Wireless Set No. 19 Mk III. The colours on the 19-Set popped by comparison. So I made the decision to remove all the paint on the 52-Set Handles No. 72 and build it all back up. A web search a while back found these two Testors colours were the closest matches to the originals.

So the rebuild of the Sender can continue now!

David

[David Dunlop]

I have been able to clean out all the old paint from the marker slot on the Knob today with a small awl. The slot was surprisingly deep when finished.

Masking tape was then applied to each side of the slot and a base coat of flat white enamel laid in with a 20/0 round brush.

I can now let this cure for a couple of hours and then start the process of building up the rest of the marker slot with Neutral Luminous Green paint.

David

[David Dunlop]

I used the DecoArt Glo in the Dark DS102 luminous paint to fill in the marker slot in the BAND Switch Knob. It is the thicker, pastier paint, you may recall, with a very even distribution of phosphors through out.

It took two coats to fill the slot to its original level, just below the face of the Knob.

The first photo shows the Knob after I was finished and the paint was charged with my UV Lamp. About five minutes later the BAND Switch Knob was reinstalled on the Sender front panel and in the second photo you can see it is still glowing happily away.

In the last photo, the upper half of the Sender front panel has now been fully refurbished and this is what it looks like under the UV Lamp.

Next step will be starting on the clean up of the FREQUENCY MC Dial Assembly components for the lower left side of the front panel.

David

[David Dunlop]

I was going to cover this off in Post #488 on this topic but realized the photo I had taken back then was not properly illuminated to show the necessary detail.

At first glance, if one were considering completely stripping the old paint from a Handles No. 72, the first and obvious fear would be how you would ever know or remember what coloured red and blue dots and marker lines went where. All four corners of the part look the same. The beauty of these external dial tuning drives used in the 52-Set, 19-Set and many other British and Commonwealth wireless sets is the designers used a standard, keyed assembly process for all the parts. They will only fit properly one way.

If you look at the centre opening of the Handles No. 72, you will see straight away it is shaped like the letter ‘D’, keyed in reality to fit only one way onto the machined brass drive head.

If you orient the Handles No. 72 in front of you on your work bench, so you can see the letter ‘D’ properly, you will find the four corners of the Handle automatically orient along the ‘x’ and ‘y’ grids of a graph. The x-axis, parallel to the front of you is the Red Flick Indicator Dots. The y-axis, pointing directly towards you is the Blue Flick Indicator Dots. Beside each dot is its corresponding coloured Marker Slot. These slots originally held an appropriately coloured Neutral Red or Blue luminous paint. These may be missing, faded or replaced with plain flat white paint at this point in time.

So if you keep this simple orientation trick in mind, it is very easy to strip down a Handles No. 72 and repaint it. I would use caution with any chemical strippers, however, as these handles are cast metal, possibly a zinc alloy.

David

[David Dunlop]

I was reviewing my notes on the Flick Drive Assemblies and realized these Handles, No. 80, basically the Flick Levers, were an integral part of the total Drive Assemblies so should be included with the repainting process, with the HANDLES No. 72.

These smaller handles are also cast parts, likely from a zinc alloy, but are simply overall Gloss Navy Grey with just a small (approximately ¼-inch) Marker Slot cast into the upper curve of the handle, visible at the top right edge of the second photo. These slots were filled with the Neutral Luminous Green paint originally.

I might as well spray paint both handles at the same time.

David

[David Dunlop]

Here is a set of photos of the Handles, No. 72 and the Handles No. 80 stripped and cleaned up.

It is interesting that both of these items are cast zinc products. The larger Handles No. 72 shows no casting lines at all on it anywhere. They appear to have been cleaned off when the part went for finish drilling and milling.

On the other hand, and probably because of its smaller size, a casting line is clearly visible completely around the midline of the Handles, No. 80. The only place it is not present is where the Marker Slot was machined into the upper curved edge, on the right side of the second photo.

It was at this point a light bulb finally went on in my head. These parts are zinc. The metal primer I have on hand will not work for very long on this material if I try using it. So a search of the Internet took place last evening and I found a supply of the appropriate primer for zinc and galvanized steel at a local RONA Store and a can is now ready for pickup Wednesday morning. Disaster averted!

David

[David Dunlop]

While I was looking for the correct primer for zinc and galvanized metal, I also realized I will soon need a bottle of Gun Blue for this project, so a bottle is now on order from Cabala’s. More on that when the time comes.

All three sets of Screws, Clamping No. C2, used on the Sender tuning drive assemblies are in tough shape and I am running low on my supply of NOS originals. That brought me to cleaning the set for the Frequency MC Dial and replating them to see how they would turn out. That was todays project.

The attached photos show the original condition of the Screws, Clamping from the Sender, what they looked like once cleaned up and the wire support system I put together to suspend the four of them in the zinc plating bath so all of them were not touching anything. The challenge was there are no easy holes in these items to hang them in the solution from.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized another key point in plating these Screws was to avoid getting the threads on the end plated with additional metal. I solved that problem by suspending the Screws from the threaded ends by wrapping a 2 inch lead of 14 ga stranded copper wire around the threads, placing two Screws on each wire, one end handing higher than the other A small centre section of insulation on the wires was cleaned off to provide continuity with the heavier copper support attached to the Cathode of the plating jar. One hour later they were done.

The last photo shows the Sender Screws along the bottom after plating and drying out, with a set of NOS original Screws above them.

David