Gutting Sprague cans

[Findm-Keepm]

Years ago, there was a Geocities website a Ham in Texas put up showing how he re-stuffed can caps. From the pictures, he appeared to be elderly, so no surprise that with the demise of Geocities, the website disappeared.

http://www.geocities.com/siliconvall...stom/index.htm <- from my 1998(ish) Netscape (4.0) bookmarks.

He used a lathe and/or a larger tubing cutter (like the ones for larger diameter copper pipe) to cut the can off as close to the base as possible. From his pix, the cut was about 3/4"-1" up from the bottom (mounting surface). A sharp twist then separated the two halves, and after cleaning up the base, the upper part was chucked in a lathe and bored out. The caps were installed on the base, and he slipped the cover back on using silicone rubber and a jig to support it while it cured. He then slipped an aluminum sleeve over the old cap, concealing the joint, and giving him a blank slate upon which he put a label.

I wonder how Hayseed Hamfest manufactures his - over on ARF (and in a thread on AK) the question was somewhat answered that his caps are NOS can caps that he emptied and populated with miniature electrolytics, and then placed a a deep-drawn aluminum or plated brass tube over the guts with a paper sleeve if needed.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Findm-Keepm

Years ago, there was a Geocities website a Ham in Texas put up showing how he re-stuffed can caps. From the pictures, he appeared to be elderly, so no surprise that with the demise of Geocities, the website disappeared.

http://www.geocities.com/siliconvall...stom/index.htm <- from my 1998(ish) Netscape (4.0) bookmarks.

He used a lathe and/or a larger tubing cutter (like the ones for larger diameter copper pipe) to cut the can off as close to the base as possible. From his pix, the cut was about 3/4"-1" up from the bottom (mounting surface). A sharp twist then separated the two halves, and after cleaning up the base, the upper part was chucked in a lathe and bored out. The caps were installed on the base, and he slipped the cover back on using silicone rubber and a jig to support it while it cured. He then slipped an aluminum sleeve over the old cap, concealing the joint, and giving him a blank slate upon which he put a label.

I wonder how Hayseed Hamfest manufactures his - over on ARF (and in a thread on AK) the question was somewhat answered that his caps are NOS can caps that he emptied and populated with miniature electrolytics, and then placed a a deep-drawn aluminum or plated brass tube over the guts with a paper sleeve if needed.

Wonder if the wayback machine caught that site?

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Wonder if the wayback machine caught that site?

Naw, I checked first. They don't even have my old Geocities site - it was a huge (100MB!!) datasheet compilation - mostly obsolete Motorola stuff. Back then, the only datasheet sites were pay-as-you-go, so I built my own. I had a whopping.......172 visits in 2 years

That reminds me - I have a buddy that had his business website on AOL neighborhood, or whatever it was called. When they killed that, he and I spent an evening recreating his single page site with FrontPage. 12 images, none bigger than 320x400, and a pageload speed of 1.3 seconds@56K. Amazing - his business grosses high 6-figures, and he still has a one page website....

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Findm-Keepm

That reminds me - I have a buddy that had his business website on AOL neighborhood, or whatever it was called. When they killed that, he and I spent an evening recreating his single page site with FrontPage. 12 images, none bigger than 320x400, and a pageload speed of 1.3 seconds@56K. Amazing - his business grosses high 6-figures, and he still has a one page website....

It's a real time saver. Like a resume, too much fluff and it would be dismissed without being read. I miss sites lite that; easily handled by my Pentium 166MMX with 64MB RAM and Win98SE.

By the way I've seen those Hayseed Hamfest caps, I really like the look of those.

[Tubejunke]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

It's a real time saver. Like a resume, too much fluff and it would be dismissed without being read. I miss sites lite that; easily handled by my Pentium 166MMX with 64MB RAM and Win98SE.

Yeah, it's too bad that much of the WWW has evolved into sites that the aforementioned type of setup just can't handle. Or in my case a dial up 56K modem can't deliver. To me simple is most always better, but I know that my setup is archaic and simple, but not better.

Anyway, I still do just fine with this site and others like it left that aren't laden with huge pictures or anything streaming. Definitely miss out on Youtube and such. I can do all that on a laptop I keep, but I have to go to a WiFi provider. On the upside, my computer related costs have definitely been minimal.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

Yeah, it's too bad that much of the WWW has evolved into sites that the aforementioned type of setup just can't handle. Or in my case a dial up 56K modem can't deliver. To me simple is most always better, but I know that my setup is archaic and simple, but not better.

Anyway, I still do just fine with this site and others like it left that aren't laden with huge pictures or anything streaming. Definitely miss out on Youtube and such. I can do all that on a laptop I keep, but I have to go to a WiFi provider. On the upside, my computer related costs have definitely been minimal.

I should clarify, that setup is long gone, I had it from 2001-2003 I believe. My current rig is about a decade old and has Windows 7 Pro but it's good enough for me. I don't know why old computers are priced like they're made of gold these days.

Anyway, I finally got the guts out of the cans. I finally realized the hard layer I hit wasn't tar at all, it was another phenolic wafer covered in black goo from the decayed rubber. The only cans I had taken apart before were smaller single-section units from late 70s/early 80s RCAs. These were a lot harder to gut even after I realized what I was doing wrong. They didn't smoke while being heated over the stove, but their contents did upon removal so I got them out of range of the smoke detector in a hurry.

Now to reverse-engineer a way to re-assemble them so they can be taken apart easily but look almost completely original; I have a couple of ideas. It's probably my OCD talking but I need to be able to check on the new caps. You never know, they could get blown by a power surge or who knows what.

Why not, this TV is quite scarce and needs a tremendous amount of work so I may as well hot-rod it.