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Post by elorens on May 17, 2020 11:59:45 GMT 12
This Courtenay model 85 appears to be largely intact, and a look under the chassis suggests it has never been serviced. The original 1938 electrolytics are still wired in. The metal dial plate has the original markings in black, but there is a white deposit as shown in the photo. It does not respond to cautious cleaning with isopropyl alcohol. Any suggestions for improving the dial without taking off the lettering? Thanks! Lawrence — Attachments:
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Steve
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Post by Steve on May 18, 2020 6:59:59 GMT 12
Hi Lawrence, I think you'll find the dial is cardboard not metal, and the failing surface is some kind of flaking lacquer. I spent a very large number of hours redrawing my Model 95 dial. The cardboard is embossed as well, which I couldn't do without dies and a press so I used shading to emulate that. I also tried several different gold card types from various stationary shops before finding one I liked. I spent so many hours on this that I nearly decided to start a business doing dials to try and recoup something from the effort! It was definitely the hardest one I've ever done. Cheers, Steve
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Post by Richard on May 18, 2020 17:45:07 GMT 12
good stuff Steve, looks fantastic
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Post by elorens on May 18, 2020 23:17:04 GMT 12
Hi Lawrence, I think you'll find the dial is cardboard not metal, and the failing surface is some kind of flaking lacquer. I spent a very large number of hours redrawing my Model 95 dial. The cardboard is embossed as well, which I couldn't do without dies and a press so I used shading to emulate that. I also tried several different gold card types from various stationary shops before finding one I liked. I spent so many hours on this that I nearly decided to start a business doing dials to try and recoup something from the effort! It was definitely the hardest one I've ever done. Cheers, Steve Great stuff, Steve, what a labour of love! Yes, you are right, it is cardboard mounted on a metal plate. The inner part has a silver background, while the outer is gold, and like yours the surface is embossed. Tried some acid on the white deposit today, but it didn’t touch it.
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Post by Steve on May 19, 2020 10:18:23 GMT 12
I tried all kinds of things with no success - I also suspect the entire dial face was gold (or bronze), as per the wording in this advert from the 1939 Turnbull and Jones 'Exelrad' catalogue. So, I suspect it was all gold and UV fading is likely the culprit there... Does the edge of the escutcheon line up with the edge of the colour change? Courtenay was the in-house radio brand of T&J, and RCNZ used a lot of Exelrad parts (or T&J sold a lot of RCNZ parts, one or the other - or probably a mix of both) in the early days - I understand it was a symbiotic relationship although I don't know who made what - its likely a lot of the Exelrad parts were made by RCNZ and sold by T&J particularly given that RCNZ was such a large company and manufactured so many of its parts in-house. Looking through the T&J catalogues shows a lot of kitsets with circuit diagrams that look, for all the world, like Radio Corp schematics and Columbus & Courtenay radios contain a lot of parts that you could buy from T&J for your own use.
Let me know if you find something that works on your dial - I still have my original one, I actually removed the pointer and used some very small bolts to just bolt the replacement dial over the original one through the 4 rivet holes in the corners, then refitted the pointer... one day I might pull the dial off and have another go at the original. One thing I wondered was if a coat of clear lacquer might improve it... but its such an irreversible process I didn't want to risk it... or possibly some furniture wax and some 0000 steel wool to smooth it out. Something that would 'wet' the flaking mess and make it transparent again...
I think its a failing lacquer coating causing the appearance it has though - so I doubt anything that will remove it effectively will do so without also effectively removing the dial scale. Perhaps try a little lacquer thinner or acetone in one corner? I don't remember if I tried that because it will be quite destructive to any coating on the card.
My best guess, given the embossing which would have probably been quite an expensive process to create the dies and stamp the cardstock, is that these dial cards were probably made by a company in the US, imported by Turnbull and Jones, and printed here to suit the radio they were fitted to.
Just on how similar things were between T&J and RCNZ - here is an all-wave kitset schematic from the 1938/39 Exelrad catalogue, and the model 38 from RCNZ for comparison
They're not identical, but they are very similar, and the same draughtsmen appear to have done both schematics.
Cheers, Steve
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Post by elorens on May 23, 2020 10:30:24 GMT 12
Thanks, Steve. I think you are probably right about the gold colour wearing away: it only seems to be where it would have been covered by the escutcheon. After the acid, I did try a bit of acetone on one corner. It took off the gold colour, and underneath was silver. However, it didn’t touch the white ‘deposit’. I agree that any more drastic action is likely to take the lettering off as well. I’m wondering if there is some fancy photoshop technique which could extract the black, wanted, information from the image, and reject the rest? Good idea to bolt your replacement dial on through the rivet holes!
Cheers, Lawrence —
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Post by Steve on May 23, 2020 13:33:28 GMT 12
Do you have a scanner? Send me a scan with outside measurements of the dial and I'll see what I can do
Cheers, Steve
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Post by elorens on May 24, 2020 14:50:45 GMT 12
Do you have a scanner? Send me a scan with outside measurements of the dial and I'll see what I can do Cheers, Steve Don’t have a scanner working here, sorry, but I could take a photo. The pointer is currently off.
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Post by Steve on May 25, 2020 11:31:38 GMT 12
If you can get a high res photo, taken from about 1-2m back to avoid distortion, and square on to the front (no flash) I can see what I can do... it might take a while, as its not an easy process. I might look at doing a youtube video of reproducing it... its not really a dark art, but the tools are a little arcane unless you have lots of money to throw at Adobe products (I don't, and if I did I wouldn't... I rate Adobe right up there with Apple in terms of companies I won't give a cent to).
Inkscape and Gimp are my weapons of choice - both open source. Open source tools have their problems - Gimp is a prime example of this, with a developer team who ignored the outrage of a large chunk of their user-base when they made a fundamental change to the saving process that broke the standard CTRL-S and "Save As" workflow for a lot of people - then they got outraged back at people who tried to reason with them about putting it back the way it was (or at least having an option in settings for people who wanted it the normal way)... but the tools are free to use (and open source, so you can always learn to code and change them yourself), and if you can put up with their quirks then you have a lot of power at your fingertips for absolutely no monetary outlay.
Anyway, if you send me something I'll take a look and see what I can do to reproduce the artwork, at least as well as I can anyway. I already have the general size and shape from my model 95 so that will probably help.
Cheers, Steve
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Post by elorens on May 25, 2020 17:32:16 GMT 12
If you can get a high res photo, taken from about 1-2m back to avoid distortion, and square on to the front (no flash) I can see what I can do... it might take a while, as its not an easy process. I might look at doing a youtube video of reproducing it... its not really a dark art, but the tools are a little arcane unless you have lots of money to throw at Adobe products (I don't, and if I did I wouldn't... I rate Adobe right up there with Apple in terms of companies I won't give a cent to). Inkscape and Gimp are my weapons of choice - both open source. Open source tools have their problems - Gimp is a prime example of this, with a developer team who ignored the outrage of a large chunk of their user-base when they made a fundamental change to the saving process that broke the standard CTRL-S and "Save As" workflow for a lot of people - then they got outraged back at people who tried to reason with them about putting it back the way it was (or at least having an option in settings for people who wanted it the normal way)... but the tools are free to use (and open source, so you can always learn to code and change them yourself), and if you can put up with their quirks then you have a lot of power at your fingertips for absolutely no monetary outlay. Anyway, if you send me something I'll take a look and see what I can do to reproduce the artwork, at least as well as I can anyway. I already have the general size and shape from my model 95 so that will probably help. Cheers, Steve Many thanks for this, Steve. This is what I have so far. I may be able to reduce the distortion. I had to reduce the file size to 1MB to put it on here, but I can email you a higher-res file if you let me have the address. The card is 159 mm wide by 143 mm high. Cheers, Lawrence -- Attachments:
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Post by elorens on May 25, 2020 17:52:35 GMT 12
If you can get a high res photo, taken from about 1-2m back to avoid distortion, and square on to the front (no flash) I can see what I can do... it might take a while, as its not an easy process. I might look at doing a youtube video of reproducing it... its not really a dark art, but the tools are a little arcane unless you have lots of money to throw at Adobe products (I don't, and if I did I wouldn't... I rate Adobe right up there with Apple in terms of companies I won't give a cent to). Inkscape and Gimp are my weapons of choice - both open source. Open source tools have their problems - Gimp is a prime example of this, with a developer team who ignored the outrage of a large chunk of their user-base when they made a fundamental change to the saving process that broke the standard CTRL-S and "Save As" workflow for a lot of people - then they got outraged back at people who tried to reason with them about putting it back the way it was (or at least having an option in settings for people who wanted it the normal way)... but the tools are free to use (and open source, so you can always learn to code and change them yourself), and if you can put up with their quirks then you have a lot of power at your fingertips for absolutely no monetary outlay. Anyway, if you send me something I'll take a look and see what I can do to reproduce the artwork, at least as well as I can anyway. I already have the general size and shape from my model 95 so that will probably help. Cheers, Steve Many thanks for this, Steve. This is what I have so far. I may be able to reduce the distortion. I had to reduce the file size to 1MB to put it on here, but I can email you a higher-res file if you let me have the address. The card is 159 mm wide by 143 mm high. Cheers, Lawrence -- Here is another taken from a distance to reduce the distortion.
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Steve
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Post by Steve on May 25, 2020 18:29:12 GMT 12
Hi Lawrence, I'll see what I can do with that. I found another dial while checking my model 84/85 on the site - One of the 84's I had photos of (a broadcast band set) had obviously been retro-fitted with an 85 dial which I'd missed while uploading it, so I moved the photos over to the model 85 section... its almost like yours, but it looks like it might be for a different tuning gang, as everything is in a slightly different place to your dial. www.vintageradio.co.nz/model/courtenay/85Cheers, Steve
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Post by elorens on May 25, 2020 23:12:55 GMT 12
Thanks again, Steve, much appreciated. The cabinet for my model 85 has louvres, like the inset photo on John Stokes’s circuit diagram. Not sure how much variation there was among the Courtenay models, but clearly there was some.
Cheers
Lawrence —
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Steve
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Post by Steve on Jul 28, 2020 14:26:52 GMT 12
Lawrence: hopefully this helps. Everyone else: If you have a Courtenay 85 (or similar) with the typical dial corrosion problem then this might be useful... Its not perfect, the font isn't quite right (the '1's don't look right) but I doubt anyone will be able to tell once its printed on gold card and sitting in the set... there are a couple of tidy up things I could do but they will take time, which I don't have right now... I'm supposed to be writing a research paper for uni at the moment (which I really wish I wasn't doing, hence why I did this instead )... Its licenced under Creative Commons: Attribution, non-commercial - no payment required but if you find it useful then I'd appreciate it if you'd buy me a beer if I'm ever passing through wherever you are If you want it changed in any way then you'd definitely need to buy me that beer first Cheers Steve Attachments:
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Post by elorens on Jul 28, 2020 18:46:23 GMT 12
Brilliant, Steve. Beer definitely on! This is much better than my own primitive attempts.
Cheers
Lawrence —
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