Hallicrafters T-506 scored

[Reece]

Excellent beautiful job on the caps, but I guess there's no pizza tonight.

[bandersen]

Originally Posted by Reece

Excellent beautiful job on the caps, but I guess there's no pizza tonight.

Thanks. I picked up a new cookie sheet - pizza is good to go

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson

Well, you are a saint to lavish such attention on a lowly Halli. To make the disguise really convincing, now you can roll the new cap in that cookie sheet of old melted wax & tar

Phil Nelson

I actually was planning on coating it with some old wax but couldn't think of any easy way to do it Other than putting that cookie sheet in the oven, melting it all and rolling it as you suggested that is. That would be nasty though - all the wax and tar would mix together.

[bandersen]

I've got a little system down for restuffing these old paper caps. It's kinda fun to read the old labels. These were all made in my hometown of Chicago by companies long gone such as:

Ajax Condenser Co., Inc.
American Condenser Co.
Chicago Condenser Corp.
Gudeman Co.







Now for the HV cage. Phil's site has proven invaluable.





I'm not restuffing these caps. If anyone ever digs down into this box, so be it.
I didn't have a 120K 1W on hand so used a 100K and 20K in series.




I found one odd thing. The schematic shows two parallel 500pF filter caps as does Phil's restoration. While mine has a single 0.001uF on the opposite side of the filament

[bandersen]

I've finished the last batch of caps!


First up, I made a replica tube for the missing 0.3 MFD 6 kv cap.


The old replacement 0.005 cap is in the foreground. I wonder how well that actually worked ?


I switched over to hot glue for plugging up the ends. Much easier than reusing the old wax. Only downside is that it hardens to milky white.


A little paint took care of that.


I'm not sure how good an insulator hot glue is so I made a dam to keep it out of the body of the tubes. A hole punch is the exact inner diameter.



Time to put them all back in



The aftermath

[GuyIncognito]

On occasions when I restuff caps, I like to use hot glue to seal the capacitor tube ends; it's less bothersome than remelting the cruddy old wax, and is easier to remove (for future restorations).

I used to use a brown Sharpie to color the ends, but I finally found these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...#ht_2283wt_982

The color is fairly authentic--it's far better than a brown Sharpie, anyway!

Other colors are offered, but dark brown is good enough for the likes of me.

A word of warning--there's another type of brown glue stick available for attaching hair extensions, but they are made of an unsuitable material...make sure, if you buy tinted ones, that you're getting regular old vinyl gluesticks.

If you really want to go all out, dip the whole assembly in new, freshly melted bees' wax--the resulting rebuilt cap is pretty much indistinguishable from an "original" one, but has the advantage of looking new (which is to say period, but new) and being clean.

[bandersen]

Thanks - I had no idea colored glue sticks existed! What a timesaver

Any tips for dipping ? Do you melt a big pot of beeswax ? I do have a block, but it smells pretty strongly of honey.

[GuyIncognito]

I think it's possible to get bees' wax in various stages of refinement, but I've used the stuff that smells like honey, and it looks authentic.

You should never directly melt the wax in a pan, since it can flash on you. What I do is use a sort of double-boiler arrangement: I put a small glass jar of wax in a shallow pan of boiling water.

Dipping requires practice, but the wax is pretty forgiving; it will come off fairly easily for another pass, or you can put it back in the heated wax for a bit, and the coating will melt off.

Expect drips, runs, areas that are a little more opaque than others, etc.--you know, like the "real" thing!

The bees' wax has the added advantage of obscuring the hot glue plug, which goes a long way in disguising the fact that it actually is hot glue.

[jeyurkon]

Nice job on the replica tube for the cap! Is that a water slide decal?

I've used the vinyl hot-glue without any problems. But I think the dams you made are a good idea. I worry about the heat of the glue damaging the capacitors. I think polyester film caps are o.k., but polystyrene or polypropylene might melt. I think the hot-glue melts at a higher temperature than the wax.

John

[bandersen]

Originally Posted by jeyurkon

Nice job on the replica tube for the cap! Is that a water slide decal?

I've used the vinyl hot-glue without any problems. But I think the dams you made are a good idea. I worry about the heat of the glue damaging the capacitors. I think polyester film caps are o.k., but polystyrene or polypropylene might melt. I think the hot-glue melts at a higher temperature than the wax.

John

Thanks. Yes, it's a water slide decal using the 'Century Gothic' font.

Hmm, I never considered the heat issue. I was more concerned about the leakage and voltage breakdown of the glue. Perhaps it merits a little experimenting

[Glenz75]

I've been following this thread from the first post, you must have the 'patience of a saint' in doing all this and your eye for detail is pretty impressive, those new old caps would fool me if I didn't know they were replicas!

G.

[bandersen]

Thanks. I grew up building model airplane, cars trains, etc. and I really enjoy this stage of a restoration.
Part of my motivation to restuff was to hone my skills for upcoming projects. The other part was just to try something new

I have to give a lot of credit to this article by Paul Shinn.

I've made some good progress today and I plan on firing it up tomorrow night
Keep your fingers crossed.

[bandersen]

I'm done recapping except for the HV area.


Time to remount the HV oscillator using Phil's tips of using long wire extensions.
The 1B3 was weak so I dug out a replacement. It just happens to be the right brand


I'm adding a CL-90 as suggested.
I did a little test polishing too. It's not exactly bright cadmium, but is has the similar white powdery corrosion.


Cleaning the knobs in some warm soapy water. That loosened up the crud, but it still requires scrubbing to get it off.


I discovered this set still has a channel one selector. They just cut the shaft off short.

[bandersen]

I found this tag just before powering the set up. I wonder what RePhased means


I'm using a dummy load in place of the 7JP4 filament and left the speaker disconnected. I have an isolation transformer and variac on the AC line. I added an extender test socket to the 25Z6 so I can monitor the B+


No explosions, no smoke and B+ seemed OK so I installed a 7VP1 CRT.


It shows signs of life
No picture or sound, but it's alive





I fired up my B&K 1077B and was able to get a picture of sorts and a bit of sound. That's all for tonight. All in all, not too bad.

[Phil Nelson]

Fast work. You should stop over here and clean up some of my neglected projects. I have two of these in the waiting line: a metal T-54 that I got last year, and one in the leatherette "luggable" cabinet that a guy gave me because he had too much stuff that doesn't work. Now, I have too much stuff that doesn't work.

I didn't really plan to get all three cabinet styles, but now that I do, it would be fun to (some day) take a photo of the three sets playing together.

Phil

[bandersen]

It seems that the voltage doubler and tripler aren't doing their jobs. I have 100 VDC across the board while I should have 125, 260 and 390. I replaced the selenium with a 1N4007 and the 6X5 and 25Z6 test OK.