Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Dave, another possibility you may consider (and I've used) is to give up on the curled damage. Your chances for a good cosmetic result is limited anyway. So remove it to the most solid, flat areas, then build up the undersurface with paint/varnish feathered to the original paint, then carefully match and dab on grey (a final semi-gloss varnish overall will hide a lot of sins). To repair the decals you may have no other choice than a 3 zero paintbrush and a steady hand.

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

For a number of weeks now, I have been hesitant about starting the clean up of the Sender front panel. This centres primarily on the lifted paint. It basically consists of two forms of lifting: some has lifted and stayed flat, other bits have lifted with a curl. The attached photos illustrate some of the latter.

Flat lifted paint is relatively easy to deal with as it is generally fairly tolerant of pressure being carefully applied to it, as will happen with cleaning and polishing, and it can be reattached to the metal panel plate with a little Crazy Glue being wicked under an edge. Some bits you can clean first, others may need to be reattached first, but the process is fairly straightforward, though slow.

By comparison, lifted paint that has curled is a nightmare. It can be snagged by almost anything and get torn loose with no guarantee at all about how large a piece will break free. With no support under the lift, any downward pressure will snap it free with the same unknown result. You can get glue under it easily enough to support it for cleaning and polishing, but you must be prepared for the fact these imperfections will then be permanently visible on the panel.

I had initially thought of using a heat gun to soften the paint gently in order for it to relax enough to be pressed back in place and be allowed to cool flat enough for the Crazy Glue treatment. I am still confident the concept would work on a panel that was a simple, painted surface. The big negative on this Sender panel, however, is the large number of original decals still present and in close proximity to most of the curled paint bits.

I have absolutely no clue what type, or thickness, of clear substrate was used for these 75-year-old decals. Same goes for the glue used on them and the whole process of bonding decal paints, luminous paint pads and paints. The odds are extremely high they all have different expansion and contraction characteristics under a high heat load and with that many unknowns at hand, I am going to forgo the use of the heat gun.

After studying the paint for some time now, it is evident one can rank the condition of it from ‘best’ at the top of the panel to ‘worst’ at the bottom. That does not eliminate surprises from the project in the least, but logic tells me to start at the top and carefully work my way across and down, adjusting techniques and processes as I go. My fingers seem to have survived cleaning the Sender Door assembly just fine. I will just have to continue to proceed in baby steps and the first ones will start today.

David

[David Dunlop]

Hi Bruce.

That option is actually quite high on my Think About List at the moment. I have never had a problem building a paint chip back up; my downfall has always been the feathering thing. I always admire watching someone with that gift apply it! Fortunately, or otherwise, I still have lots of time to think about that option. The worst damage to the paint will be the last I get to.

The cleaning of the Sender front panel officially started just over two hours ago, only five minutes of which was used to take the two attached photos.

One small section was cleaned, top left corner above the door cutout. On the good side, not one small chip of paint was lost. On the bad side…that was a lot of work! Here’s why.

Take a close look at the second photo, at the junction of the now re-exposed original Gloss Navy Grey paint and the varnish topcoat. At the leading edge of the varnish, notice the thin band of lighter varnish? That is the original wartime varnish topcoat. It is a thin and consistently even application of varnish. The darker stuff is the varnish coat that was applied in the 1960’s and it is one horribly, sloppy job! If you take this panel out into the sunlight and move it around, you can actually see various shapes and sizes of spray gun patterns where the varnish was applied. Some are thicker than others. Some are almost at the point of going ‘orange peel’, and all of them were applied over everything on the panel! Dirt…dust… missing paint…everything! If you look again at the second photo, you will see a light coloured line in the varnish wandering roughly left to right from the midpoint of the transition line between the Gloss Navy Grey and the varnish. THAT, is a run in the 1960’s coat of varnish. There was not proper spray paint technique used at all. It was a simple ‘aim and spray’ at various points over the panel.

What makes this varnish work even sadder is that only two new decals were applied to this panel in the 1960’s overhaul: the two white “LUMINOUS COMPOUND RADIO ACTIVE” decals seen between the red and blue Flick Indicator Decals. And these decals are incorrect. None of the paint is radio-luminous. It is all phosphor-luminous.

A good three quarters of the time spent on that small section was simply cutting through the top layer of varnish. Once it is out of the way, the wartime layer polished back very quickly.

The nice thing about the polish I am using it that it leaves a thin coat on any bare metal surfaces, which helps keep rust at bay until the entire panel is done and touch up painting can begin. A cloth with warm, soapy water takes the polish of easily and then all those bits of metal can get a coat of primer, ready for the paint build-up process to begin.

David

[David Dunlop]

I had a box of Danish for breakfast this morning, so was feeling a bit energetic today. The left and upper surround of the Blower Door opening is now cleaned.

Interesting to find some touchup work done to the paint early in this Senders career, and another bit of good news showed up as well.

Whatever shop this 52-Set was sitting in prior to my purchasing it, a lot of soldering was being done. There was a lot of small splatter spots on the panel and so far, as I have reached them with cleaning, they have all popped off and there is no apparent heat damage to the underlaying paint.

David

[David Dunlop]

It was a sticky bun that got me through this mornings polishing session, and my right index finger is now finally starting to hurt a bit. The left one has now been drafted.

The top most strip of the panel is now cleaned. Tomorrow, I think I am going to attempt some cleaning beside one of the decals on the panel. I was initially thinking about doing this work free hand, but I am now considering some kind of guard to use to prevent polishing over any of the decals. From what I have seen of them, most appear to have about 1/32-inch of backing still showing, beyond the outer borders of the decals themselves. Hopefully, more on that tomorrow.

David

[David Dunlop]

I just did a quick arm waving general calculation.

At the end of todays work, and including the door assembly, 23.9% of the Sender front panel has now been cleaned.

David

[David Dunlop]

While thinking about and planning for using a heat gun to flatten the raised paint on the Sender front panel, I had been looking for a suitable tool to press and hold the softened paint flat while it cooled. Using my fingers was out of the question. I eventually remembered the old pink, natural rubber, pencil erasers we used to use in school, the ones with the bevelled ends. They would make the perfect tool for that work. Took a while to find them and I was pleased to discover they are still called ‘Pink Pearl’ and come in several sizes. I ended up buying two sizes.

Fast forward to the cleaning of the Sender front panel without using a heat gun. All of decals on the panel are original and in very good shape, so need to be saved. How do you get close to them with a big fat finger, wrapped in a cloth covered in polish without going over the decals accidentally and doing some serious damage to them? The erasers suddenly came back to mind. They are soft and have lots of straight, crisp edges on them. It was worth giving them a try.

The test decal became the FREQUENCY MC one on the left side, directly under the door opening. I lined the side of the eraser up along the left edge of the decal and used a C-clamp to hold it in place. I had to play with the tension of the clamp a bit to find the point where the pressure applied starts to mushroom the eraser and then slowly back off until the edge of the eraser along the decal straightened out. The lower edge of the FREQUENCY MC decal is longer than the eraser, but it was an easy task to clean along half the decal and then move the eraser forward to clean the remaining section. I am quite pleased with the results.

I will not be able to reach all of the rectangular decals with the limited range of the C-clamp, but enough to help. The curved decals are another matter.

David

[David Dunlop]

I decided to continue working in the upper right quadrant of the Sender front panel this morning to bring the cleaning down to the top of the BAND decal. I was curious how working free hand around the curve of the BAND decal and the upper portion of the CANADA decal was going to work. Also, that is still the thickest 1960's varnish coast in that area and the sooner I get rid of it the better.

The free hand work around the curved decals went quite well. I can easily feel the decal edges when polishing with a bare finger, as well as with a single layer of cotton T-shirt material over a finger. This makes it quite easy to know when to back off the pressure. I can also detail in close with just a fingernail under the cloth and follow the edge to buff out the last bits of yellowed varnish.

Tomorrow I will probably go back to the area under the door opening and see how easy it is to polish off that incorrect white decal.

David