Switchboards Charging No. 5C Mk I Canadian
I decided to get a look inside the Switchboard, Charging today to see what else was missing related to the two Terminal assemblies I was already aware of from the front panel.
The back, plywood cover is held in place by 8 brass, countersunk, slot head wood screws that have been black adonized and which are 1-1/8 inch in length. One such screw was missing and another has been replaced a some point in time with a steel screw of similar specifications.Easy enough to track down replacements today.
At first glance inside, I noticed three of the switches were pretty clean and the one in the lower right corner, viewed from the rear, was absolutely filthy with dried oil or grease. This was consistent with a bit of dried oil I had to remove around this switch on the front panel. After that observation I suddenly realized there were no wires at all on the two switches on the right side, the filthy switch had no brass terminal screws fitted to it at all and the switch above it only had the lower, centre terminal screw still in place. One was also missing on the upper left switch. Then I realized all the brass hex nuts and washers had been removed from all nine terminal assemblies that had no wires fitted and that the two empty terminal holes visible from the front side actually did have terminals fitted at one time.
I decided to pull the filthy switch and see if it could be cleaned up to reasonably match the other three. After an hour of brass brush scrubbing with two different cleaners, a water rinse and a 99% isopropyl Alcohol rinse to get rid of all the water, the switch looked a pretty good match to the others and the visible terminals inside were looking brassy once again. So back it went in its position in the switchboard.
I was expecting solid copper wiring and was not disappointed but the wire colours were a bit of a surprise. I expected classic black and red, but the red turned out to be a rather attractive looking wine colour. Should be fun trying to match that down the road when I start restoration of this switchboard.
David
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