Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

A short and good week so far.

I received a phone call from Anything Custom, a local machine shop, on Tuesday advising two small items I had asked them to fabricate for this project, were ready for pickup.

This particular item used to be a 3.5-inch long piece of ½-inch copper water pipe. I needed it to be pressed flat to form a small copper buss bar that will serve as the key part to a Ground Terminal for my wireless equipment.


David

[David Dunlop]

Going all the way back to the 1970’s, I have never bothered hooking my two Wireless Sets No. 19 to a Ground Terminal when operating them, in spite of recommendations to do so in the various 19-Set manuals. My excuse was always that it was too much work to run a proper Ground Line into the part of the basement the wireless equipment was set up in.

That changed a couple of years back when the bathroom next door was renovated. I actually took the time to take advantage of opened walls and ceilings to run a continuous transmission cable in from the aerial in the back yard to the wireless equipment, and also a proper ground line. As far as I got at the time with the Ground Line was a foot long lead of copper wire poking through the wall under my wireless bench and a running idea of how I wanted two related terminals set up.

With the 52-Set being the powerhouse it is, I finally caved and decided to get this Ground Terminal completed and ensure all future operation of either the 19-Sets, or the 52-Set will be done with the equipment properly grounded.

So, in addition to the piece of water pipe that has now been flattened, the attached brass hardware and 4-inch square, plastic electrical box have been added to the parts to complete this Ground Terminals sub-project.


David

[David Dunlop]

This was the second small item I had fabricated at Anything Custom.

It is a replica of the bracket removed from the right rear wall of the tool box and it would have supported the right hand end of the wooden Hydrometer Storage Case.

Once I have drilled the mounting hole and given the bracket an aged patina I will install it.

I you want to recap the story of this tool box, I starts with its discovery and arrival back in May, 2018 (Posts #65 - 69), refabrication of the missing wooden partition (Posts #321 - 323), in 2020 and a test fit of the Irons, Soldering in Post #403.


David

[David Dunlop]

This morning was spent marking out and drilling the three holes in the copper bar, for my Ground Terminal Project. The hardware is all ¼-inch brass, but I went to 17/64-inch for the hole size, just to make assembly a little easier.

Once the holes were in the copper bar, I used the bar as a template for getting the two terminal post holes properly centered on the cover of the electrical box.


David

[David Dunlop]

With the holes drilled in the copper bar now, I could do the assembly of the hardware to the bar.

The centre post will be the connection point for the actual cable to ground. I could not find a round head, slotted, brass screw in the length I wanted but ¼-inch countersunk, slotted were available along with matched brass finishing washers, so I went that route.

The two outer posts will be the pair of terminals on the front of the electrical box, upon final assembly. The sets of three brass hex nuts on these posts, directly behind the copper bar, are merely serving as spacers to allow sufficient clearance for the center post, behind the front cover. Without them, the copper bar would simply bend over the centre post when the hardware for the two terminal posts was run home.

Next step for this assembly will be to give the electrical box a coat of flat white paint and cure.

David

[David Dunlop]

I was able to get a little more work done on this part of the project as well this morning.

After studying the hole in the back wall of the box, where the original hardware was installed, I found it was 11/64-inch in diameter. Just the right fit for a 10-24 screw. The outer hole in the box, partially tucked under the right lower hinge plate, was countersunk. The edge of the hinge plate was bowed outward slightly from the original screw being hammered back out of the hole when removed, but I think I can fix that easily enough down the road.

Test fitting the new bracket and taking s few measurements gave me a probable length of the original screw as being 1-inch. So far so good!

The hole in the bracket for the screw is centred in one end of the bracket. Once again, to give myself a little wiggle room getting the new bracket correctly lined up inside the box, when I install it, I went with a 13/64-inch hole in the bracket.

The new look of the metal on this replica bracket did not match well at all, when test fit directly across from the smaller surviving bracket, so I decided to age it with some zinc plating. This time, however, I did not go through any of the recommended cleaning steps to be done before plating that would normally give one a good even distribution of new zinc on the bracket. I just hooked it up, along with its hardware, and dropped it in the solution for one hour.

Sure enough, the final plating was very patchy and random, and much more like the surviving original. I am quite pleased with it, but have now discovered yet another step may be required. To confirm this possibility, I will need to take another close look inside the box, out in the sunlight. It is going to be raining here again for the next four days!


David

[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