Any updates on RACS rebuilding early CRTs?

[IsthmusTV]

Wow, fascinating! I sure hope this works. You're doing a great service to the vintage TV community.

Best of luck!

-Clark

[miniman82]

Lookin good Bob, my hopes are high!

[NewVista]

Amazing exciting Research in finding the elusive source of these leaks & potential cures.

See you Saturday in Whitefish Bay!

[ohohyodafarted]

I spent the afternoon with Nick and Colin testing the 15G that we nickel plated. It took most of the afternoon to get the Varian leak detector to stabilize because we just brought it in from COLD storage (it was about 20F here today) and it took several hours to get the darn thing up to room temp and for the machine to stabilize.

After we got things running, we hooked the subject tube up to the leak detector and began looking for leaks. We did not find any. So we took another tube that we had found leaks on during a previous leak detecting session and sure enough we were able to re-locate the leaks on that tube. So we went back to the tube which we plated with nickel and we still did not detect any leaks.

WE therefore must conclude that the tube we nickel plated, has been sealed of any detectable leaks, at least leaks of a detectable size that our leak detector can find.

Here are some photos and a small video whereby I do an empiracle test to see that we actually are using helium and not some other type of gas.


Click this link to view the "empriacle helium test"
http://miniman82.4t.com/video/helium.mp4

[John Folsom]

Bob, That has me all excited again. Can't wait to send a couple of tubes to RACS! Way to go. And a BIG thank you the John Yurkon, whose generous support and mentoring gave Bob and I the inspiration and courage to undertake the whole leak detecting aspect of the grand adventure. Still some hurdles ahead, but it once again looks promising.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Excellent news, Bob.

[Electronic M]

This is excellent news!

[Kevin Kuehn]

Fascinating research you guys are doing. I'm wondering if a leak could potentially migrate under the nickel plate and eventually find a new exit/entrance point? But I don't really understand the forces at work. It sure seems like the tubes vacuum would actually pull outside air in, instead of anything leaking out.

[ohohyodafarted]

I spent the day preparing for shipping. Two 15GP22 tubes, 2 rebuilt electron gun assemblies, and 2 salvaged 20 pin bases will be taking a trip via FedEx to RACS in France this week. So it won't be too much longer before we find out if our efforts here in the US, will end up in rebuilt and functioning 15GP22's after RACS does their work.

We have more guns being rebuilt at Southwest Vacuum and we have 6 more tubes to prepare before shipping them to RACS provided that these first 2 rebuilds at RACS are successful.

The next shipment will be via boat to reduce the shipping costs. We have a special wooden crate that will accomodate four 15GP22 tubes in special shipping cartons that we had made up specially for this project.

FedEX air freight round trip for one tube will be close to $800 alone. Then add the cost of the rebuilding the guns and whatever RACS charges us and we are probably looking at north of $2K/tube.

Back to work now preping guns for shipment to Southhwest Vacuum.

[Einar72]

So no more 15G guns can be rebuilt? I have one long-term open-to-air dud and a dark-gettered one with a 1959 date code (pictures posted on Pete's site).

[ohohyodafarted]

John and I were fortunate to get our guns into Southwest Vacuum just before they stopped accepting orders for work. They are no longer accepting any orders for guns. When the current orders in house at Southwest Vacuum are completed, Southwest is closing their doors for ever.

There is a SMALL possibility that John and I may each have a rebuilt gun or two left over after our tubes are rebuilt. If I have a gun or two left over I will sell the rebuilt guns that I have left over to someone who wants to have a 15G rebuilt. I can not speak for John as to what he may do with any extra guns he might have after all of our 15G tubes are rebuilt at RACS.

Otherwise, if you need to have RACS rebuild a 15GP22, you will need to have RACS rebuild the gun for you. They have the ability to do gun rebuilds, but it is very time consuming and may be quite costly.

We will be better able to make recomendations to those collectors who want to have a 15G rebuilt, after these first two tubes that John and I are shipping to RACS, have been rebuilt.

RACS is going to try and seal the weld leaks on one of our tubes with frit glass. If that process seals the leaks, then RACS can do it all in house for other collectors. If it turns out that the frit glass method is not viable for sealing the weld leaks, and if the nickel plating does work, then some sort of arrangements will need to be made to have your leaky welds nickel plated.

Perhaps my nickel plater will be willing to get involved. I just don't know about that at this point. All I can tell you is what John and I are doing for ourselves.

Please understand that John and I have been working on this for a number of years now. We have invested many thousands of dollars and a huge amount of time. We are now in the final hours of being able to have RACS do this work on our tubes and at this point there is still no assurance we will be successful. And even if we are successful, there is very little time for other collectors to get a tube rebuilt this late in the game. John and I are commited to this endeavour no mater what the cost is. What ever we have to spend, we will spend it. If you are truely serious about having a 15G rebuilt, you won't think about the price either.

So my suggestion to everyone is to wait a couple more weeks to see how things go with our first two tubes which are being shipped to RACS this week. I will report back as soon as we know if RACS was successful with the rebuilds. And if the rebuilds are successful, be prepared to plunk down several thousand dollars per tube to ship your tube to France in order to get your 15G rebuilt.

For those of you that have a 15G and are sitting on the fence about whether or not to invest the money, I can only say this. The price of a good 10BP4 is already going through the roof, and 10BP4 tubes are quite common. I saw an untested Rauland 10BP4 that was in a Rauland box sell for $227.50 plus shipping just yesterday on ebay. A good 15G will probably be worth $3000-$4000 or more before very long. I paid $2250 for a good used 15G just 3 years ago. And at that time we still had Hawkeye helping us on the rebuilding project. Now there is only one tube rebuilder left, RACS in France and they are most likely going to close their company around June. Think long and hard about the fact that if you don't act soon, your chances of ever having a good 15GP22 for your set may be gone FOREVER.

There is an old saying "he who hesitates is lost" Think about it!

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by miniman82

As far as I know (and Bob will correct me if he has time), him and John have a pallet of 15G's that are being shipped to France for a rebuilding run.

Let us hope they will have the same good parts used in the rebuild!

[John Folsom]

Currently, there are only two 15GP22 tube being being rebuilt by RACS in France. One is nickel plated (on the ultor flange weld), and the other is going to be treated wit frit glass (on the ultor flange weld) to seal the vacuum leaks. We will see.....

[ohohyodafarted]

We got word from Jerome Halpern yesterday that RACS has started the rebuild of one of our 15G tubes. We do not know which one of the two is in process. I will update as soon as we hear more.

Jerome lives in an appartment building in France, directly across the street from the Inconesian Embasy (a predominantly Muslem nation) and on Monday a bomb was exploded in front of the embasy. Lots of broken windows in Jerome's building but thankfully nobody was hurt.

Whatever is going on at RACS gets to us through Jerome, so with this bomb incident Jerome will be busy taking care of damages from the explosion.

[miniman82]

OMG, that's ridiculous! I suspect this means my talks with Jerome concerning a possible trip to RACS cannot continue now, since I would never be approved for leave to a geographical area that was recently attacked. Such a shame, I was looking forward to going over there.