13 Mar
2013
13 Mar
'13
6:29 p.m.
On 2013 Mar 13, at 4:31 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 03/13/2013 04:08 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
We have thousands at the radio museum, they get triaged and sorted
into bins. We regularly use common stuff from the 30s, eighty years
old now and just fine.
I have wondered what the rate of gas infusion through glass is at
STP, i.e. how long before the vacuum is reduced enough to affect tube
parameters. 200 years? 1000 years? 10,000 years?
Do any special precautions need to be taken with
storing vacuum
tubes?
Are these something that can simply be tossed in the attic and
forgotten
about until needed? I recently got a fair number, and expect to get
more at some point in the future.
A lot of the ones I got are simply dumped in an old metal tool box.
Nothing that I'm aware of eats vacuum tubes--and I've got some pre-
WWII stuff that's still ticking right along. I'd be careful with
excess moisture if I had a bunch of old lighthouse tubes or any
other oddball metal-to-glas stuff.
But, aside from mechanical shock, tubes are about as inert as one
can get.