Our current projects
 

Hi all,
I thought I'd start a thread where we can post pictures of what we're working on right now.

I'll start it off with some pictures of the cabinet for the Hoffman model 613 TV I'm working on.

The first one shows some veneer damage that goes clear through to the base wood.

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/tempimg/hoffcab.jpg

I didn't want to reveneer the whole thing so I just sanded it and filled the gouges, it's pretty noticeable but hopefully will be less so after I apply the Lacquer top coat.

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/tempimg/hoffcab2.jpg

and here's the "Good" side.

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/tempimg/hoffcab1.jpg

Okay, your turn :D


Eric

Hey Eric,

That scratching on the side looks like a cave drawing of an alien skull!

Rob

Two weeks ago today I bought this Motorola 8 inch electrostatic deflection set at the Rose Bowl fleamarket. The cabinet was in very poor condition and the vertical and horizontal sections were a mess (rewired, parts missing, etc.). I have it almost done. I am sending for the correct channel knob tomorrow. The picture on the screen looks better than the photo of it. I have yet to master taking a good picture of the screen of operating sets. This is only the second time I'm uploading pictures so I hope this works!

Here's the screen picture. I don't know how to get two pictures in one post.

Hi Steve, that's a nice looking Motorola.
Coincidentally I won the bid on eBay for one just like it this afternoon.


Eric

I took apart the Sylvania set and gave it a bath in the driveway. Was pretty nasty looking. I then found it to have a toasted power transformer. I found an another chassis like it in the attic and brought it home for a donor. About the time I checked out and swapped the transformer, I caught a cold and spent most of last week and this weekend hocking stuff up! :puke: Haven't got much further than that. I still need to change some caps out. I feel much better this evening, and hope to be out in the garage soon. Here's a shot of the cleaned chassis and the donor.

Got the Sylvania Halolite up and running late last night. After changing the power transformer, filters, and paper capacitors, I found it wasn't getting any high voltage to the crt. Found a .0022 cap in the horz width circuit that was shorted out. After replacing, the HV came back and made a pretty decent picture considering i haven't made any more adjustments since turning it on. Of course, the cap was in a really tight spot to get to. Seems the culprit is always in the worst possible place! Actually, I had skipped changing this one when replacing the rest because it was in such a tight spot. Live and learn! For now on, start with capacitors that are the hardest to get to!

In a few days, i'll run it for a several hours watching it to see if anything else goes out. Then I'll start on the cabinet.

Here's a scene from today's episode of General Hospital.:smsex:

Halolite
 

Congrats on the Sylvania Charlie! That's a great looking picture!

I have been working on my 49 Hoffman tonight, it's starting to come to life. Here's a picture of it running a test CRT.
The tuner drum is not installed here nor most of the I.F. tubes and it's also missing a 50 watt power resistor but it has High Voltage and some sweep.

Hoffman
 

Further update on the Hoffman. I'm nearly done recapping it.
It only had about an inch of vertical sweep which turned out to be an open oscillator transformer, I swapped it out with a used one from a junked RCA KCS47 chassis and now it works.

Here's a picture of it with the 12LP4 installed.


Even though I haven't recapped that section the radio is working too! at least on FM.

Zenith Project
 

This is my current project, although I haven't touched it in two days due to yardwork and other errands needing attention. It is a Zenith model 5758, with the 24MC32 chassis. It was a set I pulled from the TV shop several weeks ago. This set looks extremely identical to the 5040/29JC20 I am in search of. As far as the looks go, the only differences are the legs are placed inward under the cabinet instead right on the corners, and this one has the UHF tuner. The 5040 was only VHF.

So far, I've only pulled the chassis and gave it a bath in the driveway. It was hurtin' for one! Looking the chassis over, I couldn't visually find anything that failed. Maybe that means the picture tube is no good. :( Perhaps not, but that thought crossed my mind. I don't have a crt tester, so I will have to find out the hard way... get the chassis up and going and then plug it in!

The cabinet is in semi-decent shape. The top is hurting pretty bad, and I will probably have to cover it with a new piece of veneer. The rest of it is ok, but once the top is fixed, I'll refinish the whole thing.

I'm not sure how far I will get with this... I return to the ship in a week and I will have other things to do that will take up my time. Hopefully, I'll get far enough to completely power it with the CRT plugged in and have some sort of picture. The rest of it will have to wait till I return from the ship again.

The chassis after a bath...:eek:

Zenith Quality
 

Those Zenith chassis sure are nice looking, not at all like the crappy PC board RCA & most everyone else used.

Are those Compactron sockets I see?

Eric

Eric,

Yes, this has a few Compactrons in it. I like this type of chassis for the terminal strips used. The components underneath have plenty of room, and because of the style of strips, the components seem to be layed out nicely, and easier to remove/replace. Since the terminals all stick thru the top of the chassis, it is usually easier taking readings from various places.

My big Curtis Mathes chassis was the same way, and it was extremely easy to replace parts under the chassis and do a nice neat looking job. :D

RCA Projection set
 

I'm in Wisconsin this week for Thanksgiving and thought that I'd recap my projection set. RCA must have received a great deal on war surplus capacitors as this set must have a thousand of them. Anyway I got it working. I'll post a picture of a screen shot but it will look a lot worse than it really is. The picture is watchable but it needs to be in a dark room. The set does have a NOS projection tube in it.

Steve K

Here's a picture of the picture:

Steve,

Looks like your mirrors have gone south. I have 4 of these sets and the flat mirrors are usually dull from many years exposed to the air, and not much can be done to bring them back. If you haven't already done it, cleaning the curved mirror in the housing can help a great deal, most of the ones I have have been in good shape just lots of dirt. Just don't rub very hard.

I think it was Rob who posted a good description and adjustment procedure for these Schimdt optic systems.

Chuck

RCA chassis
 

Steve,

The chassis in that set looks easy to work on... dealing with one chassis per section. Do the different pieces plug into each other, or are the wires from one chassis to the next soldered into one another?

Zenith Update
 

I put partial juice and later full juice to the Zenith 24MC32 chassis. The tubes all light up, but I found it has no B+ voltages. It uses silicon rectifiers, and they seem to have taken a dump. Now I'll have to make a trip to the parts house. Sure wish it used 5U4's... I have plenty of those laying around!

Zenith
 

Charlie, my 56 Zenith portable uses the same construction on it's chassis.

So easy to recap, just heat the terminal from the top and pull the cap out, shove a new one in the hole and add a little solder!

I have a bunch of Compactrons that were going to hit eBay, let me know if you need any and I'll see if I have it.

Eric

Chuck:

The mirrors have been cleaned but the curved one is ok but not perfect. The mirror in the lid looks perfect but to me it looks like a standard mirror. Should that one be mirrored on the surface like modern projection sets? If so where do I get one?

Charlie:

The seperate chassis plug into one another. There are about as many cables and plugs as capacitors! The chassis are not hard to work on but two of them have three to four can electrolytics each. I'm too lazy to take them out, cut them open and restuff them so I must somehow cram the new caps under the chassis. Sarnoff would roll over in his grave if he saw how it looks now but it works. I would probably do it more neatly if I were rebuilding it for someone else.

Steve K

Steve,

Both mirrors are front silvered. The spherical can be re-silvered by H.L. Clausing in Skokie, IL. (http://www.clausing.com/main.html)

The flat mirror I've been told is not a candidate for re-silvering due to size and age, best bet here is a thin rear surface mirror you can get at a local mirror shop.

I'm restoring a Berkshire Regency and have had the spherical mirror re-silvered and I have a new mirror from a modern HD set to replace the flat mirror.


Chuck

Here'a a shot of what happens when the project is bigger than a boxcar. I had to bring the test bench to the TV to troubleshoot & align the receiver from the RCA Berkshire TV.

Hope to start on the TV section next.

Chuck

Side Project
 

Hello all!

I've been extremely busy lately. Had a hectic Holiday season, working on several customer-requested restorations, still developing and producing reproduction parts, attempting to find time for some refresher business management classes, seeking some help from local Community Development agencies in getting loans for financing some big projects (my guitar and hi-fi amp lines, and the vintage tv replicas I've been asked to develop by a few friends in the furniture business). To get a jump on the project and get my design skills back into practice, I've been attempting to create drawings similar to the ones John Vassos must have created when he designed the 621TS. Eventually, I want to build replicas of several pre-war and a few post-war sets. The project is in its infancy at the moment, but I've managed to reconstruct some of the basic geometry of the 6211TS cabinet based on its relationship to the space that its chassis and picture tube occupied. Here's a preliminary sketch generated from the complex 3D vector model I'm creating. It's nowhere near finished, but gives some indication of what I'm attempting to do.

RCA 8T241
 

I decided to take a few days off from customers' restorations to look into one from my own collection. This is an RCA 8T241 from eBay that was in pretty good electrical shape, so I decided to tackle it as a mini-vacation. I just had a "tough dog" case involving a Bendix with a badly damaged I.F. transformer and no available replacement that I had to pack up and ship home unfinished. Here's a shot of the 8T241 after the initial testing. The set has picture and sound after re-forming the electrolytics, checking for bad paper caps and replacing two I.F. tubes. I'll turn it on and post a pic of it running that 5" test CRT later today.

John,

Are you planning to replicate the vintage chassis on the prewar sets too or put modern guts in the repro vintage cabinet?

I had a 8T241 that had a trashed cabinet and used it as a source for a 10BP4 that I needed for another set, my first, the 1948, 10" floorstanding bakelite Admiral consolette. This RCA chassis also sourced a vertical blocking transformer for the Admiral which had one with an open winding.

Rob

parts parts
 

hi everyone. i have a lot of parts i also have some i.f. transformers
flybacks. if is something i think i wont need i will gladly sell or trade to one of the members of this forum. i have a lot of picture tubes also. steve

Here's the 8T241 chassis running a 5" test CRT. I also replaced C76 and C77 in the grid circuit of the Vertical Output tube because they showed marginal test results on the Sprague TO-4. Replacing those caps made it easier to get good linearity and sufficient height at the same time, which was a little tricky with the old caps.

About the pre-war replica sets, they'll probably have a modern TV chassis inside simply because I doubt that some of the more exotic parts would be available. If I could afford to make my own parts, I'd definitely love to put a line of replicas into production with all-tube chassis' and RF-type HV supplies disguised in shells that resemble the old "killer" HVT's.

Safety glass?
 

John,

What's with the interesting safety glass in front of the crt and chassis?

Charlie,

That's a subtle reminder from the author of the graphics software that I've been trying out that it's time to fork over some cash or pick another program. Actually, it's a pretty neat little program so I might just invest the 30 bucks or so and buy it.

John

Well, I had a little setback with the 8T241 today. I put it back in the cabinet last night and watched it for about 2 hours with no problems, but today the picture was intermittently blacking out. with accompanying "screeching" noises coming from inside the HV cage. I shut it down and discharged the HV lead to the chassis, but didn't get the usual spark from the stored HV in the doorknob cap. OK, I thought that maybe the doorknob cap that was good yesterday might have suddenly failed, but it threw a healthy spark when I discharged it directly at its terminal. That left only one possible culprit, so I decided to have a look under the HV rectifier socket at the 1-Meg, 1-Watt resistor between the the HV rectifier / doorknob cap and the corona ring / CRT anode. Bingo, that resistor was open. I need to go get some 1-Meg/1-Watt resistors on Monday.

Here's that 8T241 again. I picked up the resistor yesterday, but didn't get around to installing it until this morning. I didn't like the looks of the HV Rectifier filament winding, so I re-wound that while I had the cage apart. Here's the picture of the set working with the cabinet fully put back together. Unfortunately, my cheap camera and shop lights don't do it much justice. At least the picture looks nice and sharp. This set has one of the brightest and sharpest 10BP4's I've ever seen.

1958? GE
 

OK, I admit this set is boring compared to some of the 40's sets posted here but...

Here's the guts of the GE I posted earlier over in the B&W Portables thread.
I have only replaced a half dozen caps and already the picture is looking pretty good :D
The CRT shown in the pic is the original or the first replacement more likely since it has a 1961 date code, It is shot and is only being used for test purposes.

I have obtained a brand spanking "new" GE tube, still in it's original box dated the 30'th week of 1957!
It's been waiting 46 years for it's chance to show a picture :eek:

Ion Trap
 

Here's a pic of the itty bitty lil' Ion trap.
The tube is a small neck 110 deg job but still has a trap, didn't think they went that late!

Eric,

Does the CRT you put in have an aluminized screen AND a bent gun? Aluminized screen CRT's do not need an ion trap. If the gun is straight it doesn't need an ion trap either....but you know all this. :)

I too am surprised. I thought ion trap/bent guns went out with the switch to small neck tubes and higher deflection angles.

Rob

The advent of the aluminized screen was the last step toward eliminating the ion trap and bent gun construction and you're right that the small-neck tubes were the first to eliminate the ion trap. There were, however, some large-neck test CRT's that didn't use ion traps, but I have yet to see one of those without a burn in the center of the screen. The burn could be from ions, but it could have also resulted from operation of the tube without deflection. I always take my test CRT out of its case and install it through the yoke of the chassis that I'm testing, but some previous owner of the tube might not have done that. It only takes one time to burn the phosphor.

Here's my latest non-customer project. It's the Fada TV30 that I bought from Tim last year. I started recapping it shortly after I bought it, but found myself too busy to finish it right then. Before I started recapping, I ran my usual preliminary tests on the circuitry and reviewed some notes that Chuck had written about his experience with the set before Tim owned it. This set has been passed around like a groupie ... lol. I'm about 90% finished with recapping it and have been firing it up at several convenient points to check my progress. So far, it appears that I've corrected all the issues from Chuck's notes and I have a recognizable picture and some sound that keeps getting better as I recap more stages. By the time I'm done with the recapping, my second B&K 415 should be arriving and I'll re-calibrate that unit for 21.25 MHz IF work, leaving my first 415 set up for 39.75 MHz. Here's an under-chassis picture of the TV30. Note the Amprobe inductive ammeter and the divider coil fitted to a "cheater cord" that I use with my Variac when I'm powering these old sets up.

Here's how the picture looks at this point. It's not great, but at least it confirms that I'm making meaningful progress with each step.

John,

I was the previous owner of Tim's Fada TV-30. This is the one that had some minor grey paint splatter on the front. I had a raster on it briefly until one of the wax caps under the chassis in the Horizontal section started to crackle and bubble. At lkeast that is what I guessed it must have been. The raster went out as the cap shorted I'm guessing. I never pulled the chassis to investigate. Nice to see someone finally doing this set!

Rob

John,

In my experience screen burns from deflection failure are small, sharply defined burns. Phosphor burn from ion bombardment are larger sized darkened smudges. I have a Dumont 15AP4 that has no aluminizing and a straight gun (no ion trap). It is like new for emission and has no ion burn. When I tested it for emission when I got the set home it had obviously not been run for decades. It immediately shot up to perfect emission without delay, clearly a low mileage CRT. Many of these old CRT's read good, but only after taking a while for the emissive coating on the cathode to reawaken. It is in a very rare Sightmaster 15-S-1 set.

This tube is kinda crude, has some shape distortions, probably from almost colapsing in the baking process. If I own a vintage CRT that I'm afraid might blow up in my face from merely handling, this would be the one.

Rob

Yes, and the paint came off nicely with a small amount of denatured ethanol and soft cloth. The finish and lettering survived intact. I'm going to have the set's few cosmetic flaws fixed at some point during the repair. Actually, the blanking out of the raster was from a cold-solder connection. It looked as if it had been serviced a few times through the years, and one of the techs didn't quite get the solder flowing when he put a new cap in the video output stage. The voltages on the CRT drifted way off, cutting off the beam. The CRT in that set is absolutely incredible, definitely in the top two of all the 10BP4's I've seen so far. I have 6 sets in my collection that use 10BP4's, five good tubes and one rebuildable dud. My 630TS lost its CRT thanks to the Postal Service -- bonk, snap. hiss. Luckily, I had bought a good tube on eBay for a spare, but my Fada 899 has a dud tube. I guess the dud goes in the 630TS until I can get the other massive damage repaired. By then I hope to find another good spare or the extra cash to have the dud rebuilt.

Here's the Fada 799 that will be the next set from my personal collection to be recapped when I find time. I finished the initial evaluation last week. Aside from a snapped detent spring in the tuner and the need for recapping, the set is otherwise in mint condition. I got sound and something resembling a picture when I put in the 5AXP4 test CRT and put the Variac to it, but then I set it aside to finish the work I'd started on the TV30.