[Tube-Swap] Re: [Tube-Swap#70]Need advice (Jim Isbell)

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 02:10:39 -0800

At 04:07 AM 11/19/03 -0500, [email protected] juggled the 
keys to produce...
{snip}
>Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:54:51 -0600
>From: Jim Isbell <[email protected]>
>To: Mail List Tubes <[email protected]>
>Subject: [Tube-Swap] Need advice
>
>I have a large collection of tubes and I want to store them where I can
>get to them easily.  I tried storing them in numerical/alphabetal order
>in shelves but the problem come up when I get some tubes that I haven't
>had before and I have to move all the tubes down to make room for one
>tube in the center.
>
>How do the rest of you handle this problem?
{snip}

As my beloved XYL [KE6PNC] started bringing home from yard- and 
estate-sales, odd boxes, buckets, paint cans, cigar boxes etc. of old 
grubby unknown-worth tubes, I started saving copier-paper boxes from work, 
and photo-paper boxes from the photo lab's dumpster.  I cut down the copier 
boxes to about the height of the lid, around 2-3" high (just enough to 
clear a big G jug, or less), and used the scrap to separate the box into 
rows, cemented with Elmer's and clothespins overnight until dry.  Likewise 
the 8x10 photo paper or vu-graph transparency boxes, useful for 7- and 
9-pin miniatures, separated the same way.

Octals, loctals, G's, GT's and metals, and the older 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-pins 
go in the larger boxes, lettered A-G (so far), and the mini-7, -9 pins are 
in the 8x10's, lettered a-n IIRC.  Some sorting went on while putting them 
in, and then I created a VP-Planner spreadsheet on the cheap swapmeet ($25, 
DOS 6.22) 486 laptop I keep in the shop for packet, with types (down) and 
box designators (across), and created a column of totals per type.

Now I can search the spreadsheet by box, or by type, and see just where I 
have anything.  I don't _have_ to move anything once it's in the next 
available box.  Four to six jugs per row, and nothing's getting broken.  It 
was so sad to see the broken glass in the bottom of a big box, that was 
probably once a good one.  Now a stack of these flats is pretty safe on the 
shelf.  Labeling of the letters [A-G or a-n, etc.] is marker, over a squirt 
of flat white paint on the left corner, both sides.

Once I put one in the tester, it gets a masking-tape or drafting-tape label 
(away from other markings if possible; Telefunkens and Bugle Boys are 
notorious for markings wiping off) with the numeric result(s).  Even a weak 
old tube can still do service in the right, non-critical spot like a 
crystal calibrator; all it has to do there is oscillate.  Only obvious 
broken envelopes or dead heaters (of course, not on cold-cathode gas VR's 
or the like) get deep-sixed.  Even then, sometimes you need an octal plug 
for something...

K6JRR reminds me, BTW, that a proper-value Zener across the terminals of a 
gas VR tube can be an improvement.  Remember they strike at more volts than 
they maintain, (e.g., 115V for a VR105/0B2) and size the wattage of the 
Zener for the expected max. current.  The tube (dead or alive) can stay in 
the socket; it just won't have that pretty glow.  Likewise with hefty 
diodes across old rectifiers, just allow for early B+ (no warm-up time.)

-
73, Phil Barnes-Roberts AD6PQ  DM04we | Mailto:AD6PQ at arrl dot net
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