Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

Has anyone ever seen one of these publications? It was published by the Canadian Marconi Company and bears their Part Number, CMC 119-020.

Reference to this list shows up in the Master Parts List for the 52-Set, but nothing about it shows up at all in the Operator's Manual. I am assuming each 52-Set was issued with one so the printing run must have been on the order of 5,000 copies or so. I have no idea if the contents are identical the the list of items at the back of the Operators Manual for the Vehicle and Ground Installation, or perhaps just references just CMC Part Numbers for ordering directly from Canadian Marconi.

A bit of a mystery at this point.


David

[Bob Carriere]

....if you really want to keep your beer cold!!!!!!

You are a man of many talents.........

Went down to 7C last night..... the only cool place right now is inside the insulated barn..... and bug free!!!!!

Bob C

[David Dunlop]

I have been excited to be making some progress on the restoration of the Spare Parts Case for my 52-Set, but suddenly realized this morning I need to pause for a moment and focus on the Kimpak padding installed in this case. It is near minty, but I lost sight of the fact my other Spare Parts Case is in rough shape. The Kimpak padding is all still there, but pulled away in a few places and I need to pay attention to how it was installed, if I hope to make any decent attempt as restoring the second case. The best starting point for this documentation was to determine how this padding was mounted inside the Spare Parts Case.

My first thought when I obtained the first, rough shape Spare Parts Case several years ago was that is was simply glued in place and the parts of the padding that had come loose over the years were simply the result of the water damage the case encountered overall: the old ‘animal glues’ issue, end of story. Having now carefully vacuumed the dust and dirt out of this Spare Parts Case with a soft bristle brush attachment, I discovered the Kimpak padding was actually stapled in place. I am not sure what the actual name/type of staple is, or what the staple gun actually looks like, but it must have been an autofeed type of gun and probably air driven.

These two photos show the heads of two of the staples in the Kimpak padding fitted to the inside of the lid of the Spare Parts Case. The staple heads are roughly centre in each photo. My best measuring efforts suggest an inner spacing of the staple of 1/8-inch and an outside length of the head at 5/32-inch. I have no idea how long they are, but may see if one is available for extraction from the rough case to find out.

There is definitely a copper look to these staples, but they are magnetic, so I wonder if the staples were copper plated as a form of lube as they were driven from the staple gun to reduce wear on the gun itself? Determining the optimum air pressure for the staple gun must have been interesting. The wood is Pine, so not hard and the padding is just a fancy paper product, so you would want the head to nicely hold the padding in place but not punch right through it.

It is interesting how 80 years on from the manufacture of the 52-Set and all its components, we can struggle figuring out how they did it all, largely by hand and brain power, yet 80 years ago, all these manufacturing skills and techniques were day to day common events.

More to follow on the Kimpak padding installation shortly.



David

[David Dunlop]

Some initial general observations about the Kimpak padding used inside this case. It is basically a long, flat, heavy-duty, brown paper pouch that has been filled with. A mat of what is basically an 80 year old version of cellulose fibre. Think blown attic insulation today. The brown paper itself has the Kimpak logo printed in blue in diagonal rows of three along its length and was probably waterproofed with some form of oil based product because the case has that old, oily smell to it when opened in spite of no trace of oil ever being spilled in it, and it never being designed to hold oily items. I also know that the prior owner of this case obtained it as a newly surplussed item back in the 1970’s and used it as intended, to store NOS radio valves in their factory boxes.

The pouch of the padding is formed by folding the paper and creating a longitudinal running seam down the middle of the back of the pad, sealing in the cellulose in the process. The finished width of the pad is 8 inches and it was probably supplied by Kimberley Clark to Canadian Marconi Company in rolls, cut to required sizes at one or more stations on the production line. All of the padding was installed after the cases were painted and probably just before the exterior stencils were applied to the front of the case. The lengths of the pieces of padding all seem to be cut just long enough to form a snug fit for the two cut ends up against the interior wood surfaces of the case. Perhaps to keep these cut ends from lifting and tearing. Some edges look like they may have been tucked down in place.

The two pads in the lid and the floor of the left side compartment could have been installed at any point in the padding installation process. However, in the main, right side compartment, there was a specific sequence for the installation. The Kimpak is only 8 inches wide. The depth of this compartment is 9-1/2 inches, so the padding around the sides is set 3/4-inch off the bottom of the case all the way around, and there is a corresponding 3/4-inch space above the side padding. My first thought was that a slightly undersized 3/4-inch thick board would just be dropped into the box and then the side padding stapled in place. But then you would never get the board out. So they must have used two small strips of 3/4-inch board, two or three inches wide, placed one at either end. The padding is stiff enough this would work. After stapling the side padding in place, the two space strips could easily be slid parallel to the long axis of the case and lifted out. The bottom pad would then be stapled in place.

The one piece side pad starts butted into in the left rear corner of the main compartment, against the partition panel. It then runs across the rear wall of the compartment and wraps around the right rear corner. As it wraps to the right side wall, there is a vertical fold facing to the rear wall to help make the padding fit snugly into the corner. The padding runs along the right side and wraps into this corner, again with a fold on the right side wall, pointing to the rear. The padding then runs along the front wall of the case and wraps around the left front corner snugly, and with no fold this time, and heads along the partition wall to butt up against the Kimpak on the back wall.

The bottom pad in the left compartment has only one staple in each corner to secure it in place.

The padding in the lid has 3 staples down each end, one half to one inch in from each end, and two more front and back, roughly equally spaced.

The bottom pad in the main right side compartment has three staples down each end and one in the middle, front and back.

The side pad has four staples top and bottom on each end, 1/4 to 1/2 inch from the edges. There are five staples top and bottom roughly evenly spaced, 1/4 to 1/2 inches from the edges.

The first two photos posted today show the 3/4-inch gap at the bottom of the side padding in the main compartment. The third photo show the cut ends fitting against the case panels. The fourth photo is the start point of the side padding in the left rear corner of the main compartment and the last photo is one of the rolled in corner with the vertical fold just visible.



David

[David Dunlop]

I have waited all winter to get my two power sanders out and get the Spare Parts Case worked on out in the garage, but the heat and humidity is still not cooperating today, so I dug out the trusty old hand sander and some 150 Grit paper, to keep the dust down and work in the basement.

I decided to pull the 8 metal corner guards this time around. This gave me larger surface areas to work with on the case lid, where I wanted to start this work and it also provided an opportunity to see if this would confirm when this hardware was fitted on the production line and also give me an opportunity to see if any makers marks of any kind for the guards might be found on the inner surfaces.

The corners of the case, under all eight guards, was bare wood, which confirmed the guards were fitted to the case around the same time as all the other metal hardware fittings that required wire riveting. No makers marks at all were found on any of the guards, anywhere. What was a surprise, however, was finding all eight corners had been hand trimmed by the points being cut back. Each corner was slightly different, with all of the cut edges being between 1/2-inch and 3/4-inch in length. Only one of the corners actually came very close to an equilateral triangle with each side close to the 1/2-inch mark.

The two longitudinal gaps in the lid are actually seams between the three panels making up the top board, the upper, wider one showed signs of the wood having curled up a bit along the edge of the middle board, but this sanded down easily. After the sanding and vacuuming, I did an initial putty fill of the wider gaps, holes and dents. The two larger holes at the lower side edges are where the original putty covering the countersunk screws securing the panel to the case had fallen away. These holes also had the wood chip out at the side so once this putty has hardened tomorrow, I can go back and build up the outer edges along the sides of the lid as needed before sanding back down to the proper profile. That sanding should also remove the last of the gloss from the paint, so hopefully the new paint can get a better grip.


David

[David Dunlop]

All the putty fill work and sanding are now done on the green Spare Parts Case I am restoring as part of the 52-Set Project. All the metal corner guards have also now been put back in place. The next step for it will be getting all the metal hardware primed. The first photo shows its present state. Note the remains of the large block of yellow/tan paint on the front of the case. This is where the runs on the inside lip of the case came from and it appears the application of this colour of paint was a military thing in the twilight years of operation for the 52-Set, and possibly other signals equipment. It was meant to cover over years of accumulated variations of ID stencils on the front of the item so a brand new ID Stencil could be applied in black paint using the new NATO stock number system and identification. If you look closely, you can still just see the first line of the original factory stencil from Canadian Marconi Company. It is centred between the lower section of the two latches and reads. ‘CASE SPARES’.

I was initially thinking of moving straight to the restoration of the last remaining wooden case I have for the Remote Receiver, just to get all three wooden boxes/cases done, but I have now decided to get the second, grey, Spare Parts Case ready for painting and finish the two of them off at once. The second photo is the grey case in its current condition. It has lost a lot of the putty fill in the screw holes on the bottom of it and has one huge swollen seam across the bottom of it from a good water soak at one point. I will be working with 80 to 120 grit sand paper with this case to get that seam filled and the wood trimmed down to a flat finish. The other two photos here give a pretty good indication of the damage to the Kimpak padding in the right side compartment. Clearly, valves were not stored here in its civilian life.


David

[David Dunlop]

While taking photos of the inside of the grey Spare Parts case, I noticed one of the staples for the Kimpak padding on the back wall of the right side compartment was visible where the padding had been torn away. It shows as a shiny bit in the first photo.

I carefully extracted it from the rear panel and straightened it out. In the second photo, it is sitting on a paper with 0.25-inch grid squares. The staple looks to be 1/4-inch but in fact is a tad narrower than that in all reality. I did just not want to risk breaking it by overworking it back to full true dimensions. It does, however, help document the materials used in the fabrication of these cases by Canadian Marconi Company.



David