Any updates on RACS rebuilding early CRTs?

[ChrisW6ATV]

Happy New Year to you too, Jerome, and thank you for providing the updated information.

[jhalphen]

Good day Guys,

I had promised an update this week, sorry! it will be next week.

Very briefly talked to RACS 3 days ago, aged mother was in hospital with her two sons at here side, obviously not the sort of place for lenghthy CRT discussions.

For those of you that have tubes under rebuild, (Don) i had also asked for a recent status update.

The two brothers lost their father last year, so health is a very sensitive issue with them right now, hope that you will undrestand ...

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

[jhalphen]

Good day Gentlemen,

I have just come back from spending 2 days at the RACS factory in
southern France.

Day one was spent with UK collector Panrock (Steve O.) accompanied by
one of his customers. Day two was an all day Q & A with the two brothers
who own RACS.

VK USA and UK Vintage being public forums i will remain evasive on
certain private issues, but will be happy to answer personal inquiries
by PM.

Yes, the closing rumors are founded. The reasons are multiple, let me
briefly explain them here.

One) The demand is tapering off fast. After the huge french railway
order, 4000 CRTs over 4 years, the contract has been delivered. The
perspectives of another big order like this one are slim.

Two) supply of parts is getting downright impossible: for 1000 of the
SNCF CRTs, RACS had to locate 30 container's worth of raw glass shells
and screens found in Syria! and bring them to France. These were unused
leftovers of when Corning Glass ruled the roost and set up factories all
over the Middle East. For this batch alone, supplies came from 12
countries and the CRTs were built as brand-new from the raw spares.

Actually the french railway and some other customers would like them to
continue operations but where do you locate today raw inventory of this
volume?

Three) Just to break even, the factory needs to produce 1200 CRTs/year
over 10 months, counting in 1 month of summer holidays + 1 month of
assorted legal/religious holidays. That's 120 tubes/month.

Four) When you regun CRTs, there is a step where the process fundamentally differ: in the case of the fairly recent railway CRTs, NOS complete gun assemblies were in stock or purchaseable, allowing for very fast regunning in volume quantities. However for vintage/collector jobs the gun has to be rebuilt by hand. In some unlucky cases where the gun's cathode, filament and G1 grid are impossible to reach because other electrodes are in the way, or because of sheer fragility, the entire gun must be carefully disassembled then reconstructed. Believe it or not, this can up to two full days and only François does it.

Don't think that simple triode guns are fast & easy, this 2 day job was on a pre-war CRT used in a mirror set Telefunken. More recent color CRTs can be rebuilt a profit providing you have a NOS gun assembly. Any 1950s tri-color will require 3x hand rebuilding of all guns.

Which also explains BTW why no one gets rich in this business today, 4 to 6 days of skilled labor for one kinescope if billed at true cost, is already way over the price quoted for 15G rebuilds.

Five) François R. the CTO is attained by the "Scotty" (Hawkeye) factor. Now in his ealy 60s, he wants to paint, go fishing and enjoy life a bit inasmuch as you can while having to care for a severely invalid family member.

Six) The future.
Parts are being purchased to ensure continued rebuilding in spite of suppliers closing down production lines.

At the end of Q2 2012 RACS will assess it's financial situation and make decisions. They are a variety of options such as part time operation, reduction of workforce to a bare-bones crew, etc. François is a highly active fully trained engineer and actually enjoys the variety and challenges of collector tube rebuilds, finds it much less boring than a dull batch of 1000 19" or 21" 110° monochrome CRTS all of the same type.

The factory being in a floodable area, it happened 5 times over the last 35 years, the building and land have very low resale value. The machinery is worthless and will end up in the tip or sold at scrap metal prices. The huge inventory of chemicals and new parts is sellable.
Salvaging and moving some of the production gear to the US or UK is a possibility but aside from the cost/where/when questions it's an industrial project requiring a leader, dedication and a lot of energy.
François quoted it took one year to train a person to be a competent glass worker...

Interesting to complete Scotty's ETF donation is a 3x station screen coating line which Hawkeye did not have and all-electric ovens which offer much better control ability and less risk of contamination and fire than gas-heated ovens.

7) Conclusion
This is i believe a fair and transparent assessment of the current situation. I will endeavor to keep you all updated on a timely basis to avoid any bad surprise short notice of closure and give time for all to get wanted/needed jobs taken care of but do bear in mind that time is getting short and the Western World being in a recession does make operation of a small co. in a receding market increasingly difficult.

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

[Phil Nelson]

Thanks for that detailed report, Jerome. It gives a clear explanation of why CRT rebuilding has been abandoned as a money-making operation. Lack of demand + lack of raw materials = zero profit.

120 tubes per month seems like more than the collector community would ever demand on an ongoing basis. There simply aren't that many TV collectors in the world, and not every CRT needs rebuilding.

Another barrier to entry is the required skill level. One year's apprenticeship in glassworking is not trivial.

Perhaps the ETF rebuilding project is the only hope long-term. As a non-profit organization, ETF would not have pressure to generate profits for employees or shareholders. The human factors and economics still matter, however. You need people (or at least one!) who can commit to a high level of training. Materials are not free and their cost will only go up, as existing stocks are depleted.

Unless new people are trained now, this art may be lost forever after the few remaining "master rebuilders" are gone. This is not something one can learn by watching a 3-minute Youtube video.

Phil Nelson

[miniman82]

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson

This is not something one can learn by watching a 3-minute Youtube video.

If that ain't the truth!

If things go according to my master plan, I will retire from active duty in around 8 years. If things are still in stasis as they are now, I will make every effort to land myself in Hilliard and devote my time to the rebuilding project. Being retired from the military I would only have to work part time to support myself, so I would be able to spend large amounts of time at the museum. So if no one else steps up in the meantime, by 2020 you will have your man. Hopefully Scotty is still available then to train me.

[Tom Albrecht]

Once again, I would like to see whether people are willing to pool together a shipment to RACS. I have a 20BP4 which I am willing to pay RACS to rebuild, but I'm not too excited to pay even more than the rebuild cost for shipping the CRT there and back. Pooling a shipment will split the shipping cost and make things far more reasonable.

Otherwise, I suspect my 20BP4 will be crunched sometime in the next couple or years, since it takes up a lot of space.

I've been ready for several years to pay RACS to rebuild; the shipping cost has been the impediment. Finding the money is not the issue; it just simply seems wasteful to pay $2000+ for one tube rebuild, over half of which is shipping cost.

[ohohyodafarted]

Tom,

John Folsom and myself contracted a local box maker to construct special heavy duty tri-wall corregated boxes with special inserts to hold the 15GP22 tubes. We are quite certain that they will be strong enough to make a round trip via FedEx air freight to RACS and back. We are figuring about $300 each way. We do not feel that is to much considering the value of the tube.

Your 20bp4 is almost as rare and valuable. If I were you I would contract a local box maker to work with you to create a strong shipping container with the correct types of inserts to hold your tube and send it off.