U-Test-M restoration

[ohohyodafarted]

I just finished it so here are a few photos. It was in very bad condidion. Tester needed repair, turned out to be an open multi section wire wound tubular resistor, and that got it back up and running.

I got this unit acouple months back. It was originally located in the gas station/repair garage of a Phillips 66 station about 50 miles south west of Chicago. The daughter of the late gas station owner had saved it and was being stored at her home.

When I was about 12, back in 1959, I remember going to Rosen's drug store, near my house, to use a tester exactly like this one. It was burried in a back corner of the drug store. When the Hallicrafter 820 you see in my avitar, would act up, I would pull all the tubes and go to Rosens to test them.

BTW, the U-Test-M company was located on the south side of Milwaukee. I found two addresses for them. One of the locations was around 42nd and Lincoln. So for me this was a localy company that had a national presence.

The metal cabinet needed to be completely sanded down. Then it was sprayed with two coats of gray hammertone enamel.

The vacuum formed sign was badly cracked and broken. I made a new frame from white model builders styrene sheet, and mounted the old sign over it. There is still a small piece of the sign missing in the upper right corner, but I cant do anything about that.

The decal on the front is a recreation of the original. I took a high resolution photo of the original and loaded it into MS Publisher. Then I made an exact replica and output it as a .jpg. I took the .jpg to Kinkos and had them print it on white poster stock with a presure sensitive adhesive backing. Then I had them laminate a clear protective film over the artwork. It was a simple mater to mount it just like a bumper sticker.

It displays nice and is also functional, however I will still be using my Hickock tube tester for every day tube testing.

Here are the before and after photos.

Before


After


After front open