Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

It was not supposed to, but the sun actually broke out after lunch yesterday and stayed out until mid evening, so I got a little more project work done than I had initially expected.

First off was to get the toolbox out onto the patio for a closer look at its assembly history. The rectangular patch of bare pine wood, where the missing bracket had been mounted was always quite visible, but what I now noticed was the spray paint shadow of thin paint angling down to the bottom left side of the rear wall, about 10 degrees. That told me a lot. The countersunk hole for this bracket hardware was drilled early on in the assembly process. The bracket then had to be installed and the countersunk hole filled in before the hinges were installed, as the right side hinge strap covers part of this countersunk hole.

I then cleaned off the smaller front bracket that holds the tip of the soldering iron and was very surprised to see close to 90% of the original Flat Olive Drab paint was still in place on the two inner surfaces of the bracket. There was little at all left on the back/outer face that would have been exposed to the comings and goings of various tools over the years.

A look at the underside of this bracket with a mirror showed nothing but surface rust and original plated metal covered with a thin skin of oily dirt.

I am glad I took the time to age the metal on the new bracket, but the original plan to leave it all bare metal is now out the window. This bracket supports one end of the small wooden box the Hydrometer is store in. I would be surprised if the hydrometer box and contents weighed much, if anything, over 1 pound and there is very little room for it to move around in this bracket. My thought, therefore, is that if the original bracket had still been there as well, it would also have a very high percentage of surviving original paint on its two inner surfaces and most, if not all, of the paint on the outer end facing to the interior of the tool box would have ben worn away, just like the surviving, smaller bracket.

So I have some painting yet to work out before installing the hydrometer bracket.

David