[David Dunlop]

I am still working away on sanding down the grey Spare Parts Case and getting it ready to repair holes and cracks in the exterior wood, prior to repainting.

It revealed another of its secrets last evening when I was working on the lid. A large white painted ‘R31’ came to light on the front edge of the lid, directly on top of the factory Flat Olive Green paint and right underneath a coat of NATO Green and what is likely the civilian grey paint. I seem to recall these sort of numbers were applied to Signals equipment, during Military Exercises here in Canada, to help the various units keep track of their stuff. I can now add this Cases, Spare Parts number to the red ‘R22’ that was on the front of the main set Sender and the yellow ‘J15’ that was on the Coil, Aerial Tuning Assembly I received from Bruce Parker.

This grey case has also revealed another mystery, or perhaps more correctly, has just added another piece to a mystery it first revealed back on Page 6 of this thread in Post #168.

At that time, I noticed the left hand Handle Bracket, factory riveted to the lid, was actually a right hand Handle Bracket, properly drilled to fit the holes in the lid. As assembled, the handle works correctly, but it was odd at the time, the correct part was not installed.

While cutting back more of the grey paint on the front of this case last evening, more of the factory original stencil became visible, to the point where is looked to be a larger stencil font than what was on my green Cases, Spare Parts and the tool box. Putting a tape measure up to the two spare parts cases this morning confirmed the stencil on the grey case is indeed 3/4-inch, whereas the green case and tool box are both 1/2-inch. Both stencils are five lines in height, with each line holding the same characters. The top of the first line of each stencil starts exactly one inch below the lip of the case and the first lines are both centred between the two latches. However, because of the larger font size on the grey case, the fifth and last line ends up one inch lower on the front of the grey case than the last line on the green case does.

So now I am wondering. The green Spare Parts Case probably came out of the normal wartime production run of the 52-Set. There is nothing unusual about it. As far as the grey one goes, however, could it have been assembled at the end of the production run, at or very near to the end of the contract for the 52-Set using whatever available parts were still on hand on the assembly line? Not an unusual thing at all with various CMP production lines at the end of the war.


David