Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[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

[David Dunlop]

With any luck at all, this collection of items, along with a few yet to be sorted, will all come together to create a working replica of the actual Operators Lamp for the 52-Set.

It seems the cargo ship full of all the originals has yet to be raised from the depths.


David

[David Dunlop]

I am not certain how many other 52-Sets might be out there being brought back into operational condition. It can be a challenge in terms of available information and every little bit helps.

In getting back to work on my Sender this weekend, I ran across a little oddity regarding the metering circuits in the 52-Set.

On Page 127 of the Operators Manual, there is a Table of Voltage Readings provided for the Sender. For HT1, depending on Sender Settings, the range of values is from 290 Volts DC to 310 Volts DC. This initially struck me as interesting, but odd. The upper scale of the 52-Set meter is from 0 to 300 Volts DC only. I then noticed the voltage range for HT1 stated on the Table in Page 127 was 0 to 600 Volts DC. If this information was correct, then when reading Sender HT1 values on the 52-Set Meter, the indicated values on the meter would have to have a ‘x 2 Factor’ applied to them, and the metering circuits would have to be set up accordingly.

When running a no load test of the Sender (no valves present), my HT1 reading was a solid, steady 150 Volts DC. Apply a ‘x 2 Factor’ and I get a perfect 300 Volts DC, which I was quite pleased with. I ran this information by Jacques Fortin and he checked the documentation and circuit diagrams. Sure enough, he found no evidence either of this metering design being mentioned in the manuals, and did confirm when the Receiver Meter Switch is on SENDER and the Sender Meter Switch on HT1, a pair of 600K resisters are brought into the circuit in series giving it a 600 Volt rating as per the Sender Voltages Table in the Operators Manual.

I am now going to start reinstalling the valves back into the Sender one at a time, starting at the front end of the block diagram. With all of them in place originally, one of the operational Tests for the Supply Unit had the two dynamotors running with 300 Volts HT1 just nicely, the next test up, however, had a massive load hit the dynamotors on startup and the indicator lamps nearly went out. And the HT1 reading was an alarming 180 Volts DC.

More as the saga unfolds.


David