Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

I picked up this small tub of Glazing Compound the other day to be able to continue work on the Tool Box. From what I can determine from the three wooden boxes/cases forming part of the kit for the Wireless Set No. 52, the Cabinet Division of Canadian Marconi Company were using a product in 1944 called Glazing Putty to backfill the countersunk screw holes in these boxes/cases, prior to final assembly and painting. I can remember my Dad and Granddad using Glazing Putty in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when single pane glass replacements in a house were still common household practises and you could get small replacement glass panes cut at your local hardware store. From what I remember, the Glazing Putty back then was a soft, pale beige clay-like material sold in either pint or quart tins, and at one point even in heavy-duty clear plastic pouches. It had a smell of linseed oil about it and could be easily formed into pencil-sized strings one would press into the edges of the glass frame and shape off with your wet thumb into a nice 45-degree angle. The oil would be drawn into the wood of the window frame as the putty set up and you could then paint or stain over it with the oil based paints back in those days.

Seems that original putty has gone the way of the Dodo Bird today. A search for ‘glazing putty’ now turns up this stuff and all sorts of automotive body shop ‘bondo’. But I think this product will work out OK. Once any loose paint is removed from any of the countersunk holes on the toolbox, this product will fill and sand nicely. A new paint top coat and it should all look fine.

Getting this bit of work sorted out has also given me a chance to better understand how Canadian Marconi fabricated these boxes/cases back in 1944. There were definitely specific steps to be followed on the line. For example, all the countersunk holes had to be filled prior to any of the metal hardware being fitted to the exterior of the box, as some of the hardware overlaps these holes. I will post what I have figured out the line work was shortly.

This has also been an interesting exercise in clearing my head of all things ‘Sender’. I needed to step away from that part of the project to better understand what the issues with the Sender might, or might not be taking place.


David

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Dave, I just finished a complete window resto on our 1897 dated house. Glazing putty and me (plus the guy at the Home Hardware and his glass cutting table) know each other very well. My first few attempts at re-glazing went very badly but now I can do a smooth 45 degree putty job as good as the best of them (if I do humbly say so myself...).

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

I picked up this small tub of Glazing Compound the other day to be able to continue work on the Tool Box. From what I can determine from the three wooden boxes/cases forming part of the kit for the Wireless Set No. 52, the Cabinet Division of Canadian Marconi Company were using a product in 1944 called Glazing Putty to backfill the countersunk screw holes in these boxes/cases, prior to final assembly and painting. I can remember my Dad and Granddad using Glazing Putty in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when single pane glass replacements in a house were still common household practises and you could get small replacement glass panes cut at your local hardware store. From what I remember, the Glazing Putty back then was a soft, pale beige clay-like material sold in either pint or quart tins, and at one point even in heavy-duty clear plastic pouches. It had a smell of linseed oil about it and could be easily formed into pencil-sized strings one would press into the edges of the glass frame and shape off with your wet thumb into a nice 45-degree angle. The oil would be drawn into the wood of the window frame as the putty set up and you could then paint or stain over it with the oil based paints back in those days.

Seems that original putty has gone the way of the Dodo Bird today. A search for ‘glazing putty’ now turns up this stuff and all sorts of automotive body shop ‘bondo’. But I think this product will work out OK. Once any loose paint is removed from any of the countersunk holes on the toolbox, this product will fill and sand nicely. A new paint top coat and it should all look fine.

Getting this bit of work sorted out has also given me a chance to better understand how Canadian Marconi fabricated these boxes/cases back in 1944. There were definitely specific steps to be followed on the line. For example, all the countersunk holes had to be filled prior to any of the metal hardware being fitted to the exterior of the box, as some of the hardware overlaps these holes. I will post what I have figured out the line work was shortly.

This has also been an interesting exercise in clearing my head of all things ‘Sender’. I needed to step away from that part of the project to better understand what the issues with the Sender might, or might not be taking place.


David

[David Dunlop]

Most of the lower section of the content label that broke loose in the inside of the tool box lid survived as the three small pieces found in the bottom of the box when received. It is now time to glue them back in place.

I initially thought the original glue might have been mucilage but then realized that glue is always water soluble and the label would have been completely gone by now, had that been the glue used. Looking at some of the surviving glue, I now suspect Canadian Marconi used the same glue as they were using in their Cabinet Division.

I have decided to go with the Elmer’s Gel Glue for refitting the pieces of label. It is a water-based glue that stops being water soluble when cured. Being a gel it does not run and it has a nice working time so I can fiddle with tweezers for a bit to get the three pieces of paper properly placed before the glue sets up.


David

[David Dunlop]

The three label pieces are now back in place.

The exposure to moisture over the years has expanded the paper fibre enough that a perfect fit was not possible, but once dried, the sheen of the new gel glue matched up quite nicely with the surviving traces of wartime original glue still visible.

The smallest piece of the label turned out not to go in the bottom section but was a small part of the top left edge.

What I hope to do next with the tool box is carefully smooth down the blobs of modern NATO Green along the inside edges of the box and lid and give that edge a new coat of the original Flat Olive Drab. The rest of the interior will stay original.


David

[David Dunlop]

If you scroll back up to the photos in Posts #873 and #878, you will see a lot of blobs of NATO Green paint that had accumulated around the edges of the tool box and lid.

When this toolbox was given the NATO Green colour, it was likely in service with a 52-Set somewhere in the Canadian Army system and it was kept closed while painted. Excess paint on the brush got pushed into the seam between the lid and the box in a few locations and in some places even wicked along this seam before drying.

Some of this paint was quite thick and rough, but overall, about 80% of the original Olive Green paint had survived along these edges. The plan with all three wooden boxes/cases with this 52-Set is to return them all to wartime markings and the Olive Green paint, so I decided at this point to file down the blobs of NATO Green and give these two edges a fresh coat of the Olive Green.

In keeping with the overall plan for this 52-Set Kit to be restored to look ‘Gently Used and Well Maintained’, I tried to keep as many of the nicks, scrapes and gouges on the surface as practical.

Slowly, this toolbox is regaining some of its original look.


David

[David Dunlop]

I was finally able to pull my notes together and come up with a logical production process for the tool box at Canadian Marconi Company, taking into consideration they would have focused a lot on as simple a line as possible, that was cost effective and easy to understand.

All three boxes/cases manufactured for the 52-Set by CMC, along with the wooden case for the Coils, Aerial Tuning, are constructed of clear pine. Clear pine boards in large sizes are expensive. You can get around this, however, by getting pine boards cut in smaller sized boards and building them up to the sizes you need. Based on the construction details of the grey Spare Parts Box I found a couple of years back, one could see the tongue and groove details in the smaller pieces of pine used to build the larger panels making up the box.

So once you have a supply of the correct sized boards available, the wood requirement for one box becomes two matched end plates, two matched sides and a pair of top and bottom covers. The ends and sides would be sent through a finger joint maker to have the correct ends of each prepared for gluing and assembly.

The top and bottom boards both have 10 countersunk screw holes drilled around their edges. Two are on each end and three spaced down the long sides. The spacing is identical top and bottom. The most reliable, consistent way for Canadian Marconi to do that would be with some form of gang drill. A board would be inserted and held in place while the gang drill came down and drilled/countersunk all ten holes at once, fast and accurate. These boards would then arrive at the assembly point on the line where they would be glued and screwed down onto the four other finger jointed box panels that were being assembled.

At this point on the line, you would have a whole bunch of wooden boxes with very little extra information to go on. The two opposite sides with the 10 countersunk wood screws around the perimeter would be known as potential tops and bottoms, but fronts and backs could go either way. So in order to remove as much confusion as possible farther down the assembly line, the remaining sides of the toolbox must be readily identifiable. This could all be accomplished at a second well-equipped gang drill station.

At this station, an assembled toolbox would be loading onto the table, with either of the two panels with the 10 countersunk screws in it facing up. Once in place, one set of drills could be lowered to make the four rivet holes for the two hinge straps and the three rivet holes for the two handle brackets, thereby forever confirming the top panel with the 10 countersunk holes as ‘the top’. A second set of drills would come into the front panel and make the four rivet holes for each Latch Assembly and the three rivet holes for the bracket inside the toolbox that holds the tip of the soldering iron. A final set of drill would come on at the back of the box and make the four upper rivet holes for the two hinge straps and the countersunk hole for the machine screw that holds the large bracket on the back wall of the box for the hydrometer case.

At this point, all six faces of the toolbox can be clearly identified, which makes things a whole lot easier down the line.

The next stop on the line would be a band saw station where the box would be loaded such that the saw would be trimming off what will become the lid of the toolbox. Once the two parts are apart, drop the lid into its box and deliver both to the next station. This one took a bit of thinking, but the final clue was in the fact that two of the countersunk wood screws on the back edge of the lid, the countersunk machine screw holding the hydrometer bracket and the 6 finishing nails securing the interior wood partition all have to be filled and sanded down before any riveted hardware is installed, because some of those filled holes get covered with the hinge hardware on the back and lid. If you have to do that fill and sanding work at more than one station on the line, you are not going to be cost effective.

So I suspect that once the box and its lid were two separate items, the next station was where the wooden partition was installed using a spacer block to line it up. The three nails on the front and back of the box are all amazingly close to the centerlines of the edges of the partition. Easy to do with a little practice looking straight down from the top. The vertical placement front and back of each of the three nails are within about ¼-inch of each other. With the wooden partition in place, the metal hydrometer bracket could then be installed, using the top of the partition to get the bracket correctly squared in place.

Filling and sanding of all countersunk hardware could then take place.

There could be some variation in the sequence in which the riveted hardware was fitted, but while still on its own, it would be easy to install the soldering iron bracket and the two lower latch assemblies to the front of the box next.

The handle would be easy to do first on the lid, followed by the rivets securing the two upper latch sections to the front edge and the hinges to the lid. The last and trickiest riveting would be the ones securing the hinge straps to the back of the box, simply because you would now be dealing with working on one big item, in two parts, that want to swing about on the hinge straps.

After that point, the only hardware left to install on the box was the eight metal corner protectors (three round head, slotted wood screws in each), and filling the remaining holes on the hinges and latches with the same wood screws.

Then it would be off to the paint shop for an overall coat of paint inside and out and the addition of the stencil on the front panel. The List of Contents would then be glued onto the inside of the lid, the contents packed and the toolbox inspected and approved for packing.

The attached photos today show the bottom of the toolbox, the front, the top and the back, for reference.

While thinking about this box, I realized how wonderful it would be to find factory packing instructions for equipment like this. I cannot think of how many times I have looked into my Spare Parts Case for my 19-Sets and wondered how they were actually packed at the factory. I know all the bits are there, but it looks a mess and getting it all to fit and look right is yet to be accomplished.


David

[David Dunlop]

This Lamp, Operators No. 2 arrived safe and sound in this mornings mail from Holland.

With luck, it will form a key part of yet another sub-project in my overall Wireless Set No. 52 Project.


David