[Boatanchors] Historic Preservation (longish) ... was: RE: Reforming Caps?

[Michael]

Okay, this is going to open a major can of worms or start a flamefest, I'm
not sure which.  I apologize in advance if it's the latter.

First off, I'm lazy.  I'd like to do as little work as possible to make a
piece of equipment operational.  If it works straight away as built,
wonderful; mission accomplished and I can move on to something else knowing
full well I may have to come back to this set someday.  For those of us
working with World War II (and earlier) equipment, the problem becomes more
interesting because components have aged and it's more and more difficult to
find just such a set.  I know that at 65 a lot of my bits have aged and
could stand to be repaired or replaced, and electronics aren't any less
affected.

It is pretty much a given that paper capacitors will have to be replaced,
especially Black Beauties, and that others may be suspect.  One camp says to
leave the old capacitors in place and install hidden replacements so the
appearance is unaffected as much as possible.  Another camp says to forget
that, just swap the old ones out and replace them with new ones.  One camp
says to restuff or use an exact replacement for electrolytic cans while the
other says to leave the cans if you must but just install new caps and be
done with it.  The same division exists with resistors and other bits and
pieces.  

In what are commonly referred to as the "command sets", there are two of
those round potted capacitors that are dead cert to cause problems when
operated at normal voltages, one each in the transmitters and the receivers.
One camp says to open the can and replace the innards while another says
that's crazy (or ruins historic value or any of a number of other
complaints) and to just disconnect the wire at the cap (keeping wiring
capacitance in mind) and add in a replacement cap where it can be done most
easily without affecting appearance too awfully much.  Sometimes the problem
(leakage) is far less severe when the set is operated at far reduced voltage
as has been shown by David Stinson but when operated as designed with the
power coming from the dynamotors the problem reappears.  The latter is
historically accurate; the former preserves the original *under-chassis*
appearance.  Which is better?

For me, the order of appearance is external, above chassis and
under-chassis.  Only a select few would be looking underneath and none of
them is in Hawaii.  I'll do whatever it takes to get a piece of equipment
working again and if anyone says I'm doing it wrong, I shall frown at them
most severely and keep on doing what I'm doing.  Operation takes precedence
over historically accurate appearance.  External appearance is pretty
obvious and that's been covered in another message.  Upper chassis
appearance is because it can be seen with the tube covers open/off or the
case opened for whatever reason.  This generally won't be when anyone else
sees it but it can happen.  

Do I appreciate quality?  Of course I do, although it's a term that means
different things to different people, and way back at the top I said I'd
rather not do anything at all if a piece of equipment is working as is.  But
if a component is no longer is spec, I'm not going to go out of my way to
kludge a patch in to make it work and try to look right; I'm going to
replace the darn thing.  (Yeah, Kludge don't kludge; how about that!)  If I
can preserve the original appearance so much the better but it is a
secondary concern - at least under-chassis.  Above chassis and externally,
I'm more careful.  NOS/NIB will be respected as such, of course, and I won't
put my grimy paws inside it.  The clean paws neither.

The number of people who would want my equipment, civilian and military,
after my demise is small and rapidly diminishing.  My workshop equipment is
worth more but there aren't many people interested in things like
watchmaker's lathes either let alone a couple hundred mechanical movements
and parts.  For that reason alone, I have sufficient cause not to be
concerned about museum or collector quality equipment, or even being totally
completely 100% historically accurate.  If that upsets people and makes them
call me bad names, that's not my kuleana, it's theirs.

YMMV

Best regards,
 
Michael, WH7HG BL01xh
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/chapters/NTH/index.aspx 
http://wh7hg.blogspot.com/ 
http://kludges-other-blog.blogspot.com 
Hiki Nô!