[Boatanchors] Re: Breadboard construction

[jhhaynes at earthlink.net]

I have rather the opposite of your problem - I have the tools and stuff
to do aluminum chassis, if only they were still available, and I have
built a lot of stuff.  But I never gained much skill with constructing
transistor stuff using Vectorboard and all.

Anyway, one thing perhaps already mentioned is to use a couple of
pieces of 1x2 lumber for sides and put plywood or Masonite strips
across it for chassis.  Leave a slot between two strips that is the
right spacing for tube sockets.

One time I built a rather large project, more than 20 tubes, and
used a wooden chassis.  I just used a piece of plywood and used a
fly cutter to cut out holes the right size for the tube sockets.
Fir plywood isn't very good for this kind of thing because the grain
is so large; I was fortunate to have access to a small supply of gum
plywood.

John Williams W2BFD had a construction technique that I rather like.
He used flat metal plates, rather than box chassis, and mounted them
on the back of a 19" rack panel using spacers.  Most of his projects
were smaller than any standard rack panel size, so he had several
plates per rack panel.  This is something we can still do today,
because any shop that does a lot of sheet metal work can supply us
with flat plates cut to any desired size pretty inexpensively.
I suppose for something with heavy transformers it would be good
to get additional rigidity by having plates with turned-up edges
rather than flat; and again that is something a sheet metal shop
can do easily.




jhhaynes at earthlink dot net