Gutting Sprague cans

[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.