Three new Admirals on my porch
 

A friend dropped off a couple Admirals for restoration yesterday and I picked up this smashed 19A11 tonight.

The console is a 26R12 with a 16KP4 CRT. The tabletop has the same chassis only copper plated with an RCA Silverama CRT.
It appears to be a 17 incher - maybe a 17BP4 ? I'm not sure but it might have had an 16" CRT originally and this is a retrofit.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6012/...4a94ff83_b.jpg

My friend also had a little bag with him. Inside I found the black knobs for the tabletop and the two damaged control doors. Considering how often they are missing, he's really lucky to have them in any condition.

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Too bad the tabletop is missing the back. I also can't find a model # or tube chart. It's black bakelite as compared to the brown bakelite console.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6143/...f6624af0_b.jpg


Little casters have been added to the 26R12 :rolleyes:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6133/...4c3fce3d_z.jpg

Both CRTs test good. The 16KP4 took about 30 minutes to wake up, but the Silverama had good emissions immediately.

As for the sad little 19A11, I found it locally on craigslist. The parts - CRT shield, speaker, knobs, etc will help me restore the 19A11 I picked up at ARCI two years ago.
The 7JP4 tests very, very good :D
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6002/...333d3496_b.jpg

Here it is next to the very early VT71 I just picked up last week. It will be fun to compare them running side-by-side.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6020/...e267607c_b.jpg

Nice sets!. Too bad about the bakelite. Good for parts i suppose

I love the 19A11, it was not only my first antique TV, but the first TV I ever personally owned. When I was 14 years old I bought it for $1 (from my allowance) from a friend who was moving. Other than replacing the paper deflection capacitors with ceramics, and a filter cap, and eventually doing a needed alignment, that thing ran unmolested for the next 30 years. (just as my GE 802D is doing now, after owning it for, again, 30 years.) I sold it in the 90s for $50, still with a bright, sharp picture.

I think you should be crowned the "Admiral King" :D Some more great finds you have there! :yes:

The 19A11 was my 1st antique TV, too. There's just "Something" about them-I've always thought they're cuter than the proverbial Bug's Ear....

Argh... If you see anything green dripping down your screen, it is my envy....

Nice find... looks like we'll be reading your restore logs for the next little while...

I wish I'd kept it. Other than a crack at the bottom (darn Bakelite!) the set was in fine condition.

My goodness. So many Admirals, and so little time.

I think you should patch the little hole in the 19A11, no point in parting out such a nice set. :D

I have an extra cabinet for that little Admiral.

Thanks! I can only take credit for the little smashed 19A11 though. My friend found the other two. I think they were the last bakelite sets Admiral made :scratch2:

At least this time someone is paying me to restore some TVs :D

Better yet these two have the same chassis as my 26X56. So I figure I'll do all 3 at the same time. That should save some time I hope.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5107/...0328b18944.jpg http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5063/...4636173724.jpg

Hmmm. I suppose it could be saved, but I'd still need a speaker and CRT shield for the one on the right.

Bob,

I had a 26R12 as a kid and it got away. Later, I got another one and restored it. They are nice sets. The table model is most likely a 16R12 and is identical to the console. I have a few spare parts for them if you get into a bind. Both sets use the same CRT.

http://www.streitsonline.com/don/26R12_Before.jpg

http://www.streitsonline.com/don/26R12_after.jpg

http://www.streitsonline.com/don/26R12_1.jpg

BTW, a kind member of ARF hooked me up with the correct color volume control since I took this picture. ;)

And Bob, if you have three Admirals on the back porch, you had better stand at attention!!!

Thanks for the pictures. Looks like a typical Admiral under that chassis - plenty of room to work :)

Here's the CRT in the tabletop. It looks to me like a 17 incher :scratch2: Check out the rounded sides. The 16KP4 in the console has very flat sides.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6125/...0fb4439671.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6023/...ceb9458980.jpg

I like the little spring loaded flyback trapdoor.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6131/...190a97beba.jpg

Hey, you joke, but to us Admiral-challenged collectors, that doesn't seem so crazy. It's a big hole, so you make a big patch. Then Bondo, primer, dark brown paint (on the whole cabinet), maybe one coat of clear, re-do the lettering, and you're home free.

Phil Nelson

If I owned that Admiral, I'd just stack a VT-71 (or something) on top of it, and nobody would ever know!

Good idea, I like a challenge :yes:

The sad part is that it was damaged very recently :tears: The seller thinks she has the broken out chunk, but couldn't find it. I'll check back periodically to see if it turns up.

I have a Canadian Admiral that looks just like that desktop, but it's in storage. The big difference is that the picture tube is smaller and rounder and the mask goes in deeper giving it more of an "eye" look.. The chassis is the same layout exactly, but of regular steel.

I was really just baiting Bob so we could all set back and watch in awe. Me on the other hand, no way could I pull that off with my short attention span. :no:

Yah, I don't have as much patience for cabinet work as I once did. I wouldn't go out of my way to get a set with such a big defect, but if one fell in my lap, I'd probably feel guilty if I didn't try to salvage it. Blame it on my thrifty upbringing!

Phil Nelson

Here's my idea of an Admiral challenge.

Some previous owner mounted an external speaker switch in the side of this cabinet. Whatever tool they used, it apparently had the precision of an ice auger. :thumbsdn:

Now whyever they couldn't have mounted that switch around the back side someplace is beyond me. :scratch2:

In my travels this weekend I spotted an empty cabinet for one of these:
http://www.tuberadioland.com/EmersonBY-233main.html
Besides tossing the chassis, they drilled a hole in the top and made it into a lamp! Other than that, it looked to be in very good condition.

That's a cute little radio. I think people (mostly guys) just like to drill holes in old stuff.

Yeah...I do..With a .45....(grin)

Glue a bit of plastic behind the hole, fill the hole with plastic wood, paint..

Admirals are common as water here. There must have been an Admiral plant in Buffalo or something.

Oddly enough, I sold one of those square-tubed bakelite tabletop sets on eBay to a collector in Norway for about $600 ten years ago on eBay. Wonder if it actually made it. He wanted it professionally packed, so I brought it to Mail Boxes Etc, where they put it in a cardboard box with tons of peanuts. I remember thinking, there's NO way this thing is going to make it in one piece......

There was a major Admiral plant across the lake in Mississauga, formerly Port Credit, on Lakeshore Rd. from the 1940s until the late 1980s. Of the many Admiral TVs and radios I've picked up, including a 1957 colour set (C322C), about half had a paper sticker on the chassis or sitting loose in the cabinet saying "Made in Port Credit." New York and Ohio got their Admiral appliances from that Port Credit Ontario plant.

Bob,

Interesting to see that different "versions" of the same model were different. What I mean is that my 26R12 has a copper plated back cover and copper plated chassis. Yours seems to be cadmium plated? Mine has the same large sticker on the back, "26R12" and I attempted to duplicate it and print a new one. Got sidetracked but can do it later. Biggest problem seems to be that the printer ink is water soluble and it doesn't take much to destroy it. I intend to let the ink dry, then spray the paper with either varnish, poly or lacquer. That may seal it you think?

Anyway, nice projects...

Maybe, certainly worth trying.
I have some opaque white water-slide decal paper I've used before to make these. They've held up well.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4136/...f3511d2e_z.jpg

I think the chassis is just bare steel.
I also have this 26X56 model which has a copper plated chassis mounted vertically. It has a 16GP4 CRT.

Weird that they used both a circular 16GP4 and rectangular 16KP4 in the same model year. There's also a model with this same chassis and a 19AP4.
I plan on restoring all 3 sets at the same time.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5147/...6aecf805_z.jpg

I have a bakelite radio cabinet that has a sizeable chunk out of the bottom. I thought about using fiberglass and Bondo but decided to try something different. I had some acrylic of the sort used in storm doors. This comes in various thicknesses and the piece I chose was the same thickness as the bakelite. Some careful cutting and shaping and I had a "puzzle piece" that fit the bakelite perfectly. I glued it in with J-B Weld. Then it took some sanding to blend it in with the original surface. Auto body glazing compound could be used if needed, and the whole of course painted.

That's a pretty big chunk out of that TV cabinet but I'll bet if you had to, some acrylic backed with some ingenious stiffening bars would do it.

It's a wonder that anyone at Admiral could keep up with all the revisions. Right up into the color era they were good for having lots of "Run" numbers. In a way I guess it's good, to have that continuous improvement. When these sets were being made, of course, they were cranking 'em out as fast as they possibly could, and probably shoving in any crt they could get their hands on.

I stumbled across someone selling an empty, intact 19A11 cabinet. They say they'll be at the ARCI radiofest in a few days.
I do plan on going and if it's still available and I have any money left, I just might go for it.

I have success repairing a hole like that. However I had to canabalize another bakelite cabinet. There are plenty of broken brown bakelite cabinets aound so that should not pose too much of a problem.

I filed the hole evenly to a circular shape. I then from cut the donated cabinet a plug to closley match the hole. It took a while but with a little patience, you can file it to the shape of the hole with no perceptible gaps.

The then epoxied in place the plug. I did not use the 5 minute variety expoxy but one which took a bit longer to harden so that I could clamp the plug in place. The plug I made was slightly thicker (1/32") and so clamping on the outside with a steel plate and on the inside with a piece of timber (poplar) ensured the plug was absolutely flush with the cabinet surface.

After the epoxy fully hardened, I went at it with fine and the finer wet and dry paper and then pumice and rottenstone until the original lustre was restored.

I was very pleased with the result: the plug matched the cabinet very well and even looking at it closely, I found the repair hard to detect.

Terry

I figure I'd better do a little exploratory surgery before I place an order for parts with Mouser.

First up the 16R12 tabletop.
The cabinet is in really good conditions as is the chassis. No rust thanks to the copper plating.
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The vertical output transformer has been replace along with a few paper caps.
Hmm, the resistors look a little odd :scratch2:
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6012/...9e6e0d37_b.jpg

They're all German! I wonder if they had trouble sourcing parts to keep up with demand ?
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6144/...f53b92f0_z.jpg

Here's the 26R12. It's cabinet is also in good condition.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6147/...bb831781_z.jpg

This chassis is also in good condition. No corrosion and only a few replacement parts.
Also, no German resistors.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6124/...89330467_b.jpg

Here they are side-by-side. You can really see the difference between the Silverama CRT on the left and the 16KP4 on the right.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6134/...9b92bba9_z.jpg http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6003/...58712d31_z.jpg

I'll create separate restoration threads once I begin work to avoid confusion.

I'll be in my usual spots at Willowbrook with that cabinet Bob. Seven spaces shared with Alan Jesperson in the area circled on the parking lot picture below:
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/2...arkinglot2.jpg

Excellent! See you on Friday :)

I have a Majestic TV that has several of those german resistors in it. I wondered if any other american sets used them, and now I know.

Someone claimed, there were parts shortages because of the Korean war. I think the green ones are Japanese "Koaohm".

Bob,

I think that the 16R12 came with a 16KP4/16RP4 originally. I wonder if that CRT was a replacement and it was made to work in the cabinet? Or, maybe it was a version of the same one. Interesting.

You can see that the HV cage is different between the two chassis so it is entirely possible that the 16R12 came with the 17" tube. Both chassis that I had/have are like your 26R12 with the louvers etc.

As for resistors, I found a similar thing when I worked on my set. There were several "doubled up" resistors to attain a certain value. I suspected a poor repair job in the past. But it was suggested that Admiral was having difficulty getting resistors, maybe for the reason stated above. So, yours is interesting. As you can see, an easy restore with plenty of room. I opened all of the electrolytic cans and stuffed them. In one situation, I could not fit one value so I installed two in parallel and they fit just fine, I am thinking it was a 20µFD and I installed two identical 10µFD in parallel. That fit just fine.

One other thing that you may find odd is that both of my chassis have a 12H6 instead of a 6H6 and both chassis were rubber stamped with "12H6" so I know it was not a mistake ;)