Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[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

[David Dunlop]

Along with getting a better look at the interior of the tool box yesterday afternoon, I was also able to paint the electrical box destined to become home for my wireless set ground terminals.

This morning, after the cover had cured to the touch enough, I hauled out my trusty vintage Letraset and labeled the cover plate. I like to do this at this point in time because as the paint continues to hard cure over the next few days, it forms a strong bold with the applied lettering This saves me having to apply a clear coat.

I was also able to mount the grounding terminals assembly to the front cover. So far so good.


David

[David Dunlop]

It took just over two years to finish this Ground Terminal, but I did so this morning.

Sorry to have bored your gizzards out with this little sub-project, but it will, eventually, tie in with the restoration of the 52-Set and help keep all the electrons happy when the time comes to put them all to work.


David

[David Dunlop]

I now have the replacement bracket clamped to the side of a piece of 2 x 4, and I have the mid-section oriented perfectly flat.

The plan is to use this setup for the creative painting ahead to try and blend this new bracket into the original interior of the toolbox.


David

[David Dunlop]

With finally getting caught up on most of the yard work today, I was able to put some time in this evening to give the new tool box bracket an initial coat of Flat Olive Drab paint to start the process of hopefully blending it in to the rest of the tool box.

A bit hard to tell where this is all headed at the moment, with the paint still largely wet. I should have a much better idea tomorrow after its dry.


David

[David Dunlop]

As it turned out, there were just two small adjustments I felt were needed with the paint work on the replacement bracket, to make it look at home in the tool box,

I added paint to the left edge of the bracket as this paint had largely survived on the left edge of the surviving front bracket.

I also added some horizontal and vertical scuffs to the upper face of the bracket where tools moving passed it over the years would have worn away a lot of the paint. This also brought it more in line with the front bracket.

The enlarged hole I had drilled in the bracket did indeed come in handy when installing the bracket. It allowed enough wiggle room to get the bracket properly aligned with the original paint shadow on the back wall of the box, as well as get the flat of the bracket level.

So I now have a toolbox for the 52-Set with a complete pair of interior brackets and wooden partition once again in place.

The next step for this part of the project now will be to figure out how best to fill in the screw holes on the exterior where the original filler hiding the countersunk screws has either fallen out or worn away a bit.


David