[Boatanchors] Reforming Caps?

[john fitzsimmons]

As Nick said, there's no consensus.  Me, I'm not gonna trust re-forming a 60-70 year old capacitor anymore after one let loose in my SX-11 and ruined the power tranny...

--- On Sun, 7/18/10, rhulett1 at comcast.net <rhulett1 at comcast.net> wrote:

From: rhulett1 at comcast.net <rhulett1 at comcast.net>
Subject: [Boatanchors] Reforming Caps?
To: Boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
Date: Sunday, July 18, 2010, 1:32 PM

Apologies if this is a controversial question, but am curious about "reforming" capacitors.  I always just replace the wax/paper and electrolytic capacitors without testing them.  Maybe this is sacrilege, and overly cautious, but I’ve always been suspicious of integrity of 4-5 decade-old capacitors.  Even if I “reformed” them, would constantly worry about killing a difficult-to-replace transformer sometime down the log.  And, I guess my goal is to use the equipment safely and reliably.  

But recently, reading accounts from a web page devoted to restoring old rigs, the writer routinely referred to reforming the caps as a normal, routine, and reliable method of dealing with these old components.  I’m willing to learn, so is there consensus regarding reform or replace?  Does replacing these old caps destroy collector's value of the equipment?

Thanks in advance, Curt KB5JO
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