14 Mar
2013
14 Mar
'13
5:19 a.m.
At 07:22 PM 13/03/2013, you wrote:
On 3/13/2013 4:08 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
Back in the old days we used to bring up the numbers on the
top of glass tubes with a quick rub on ones hair. This would put a
bit of grease on it
but we would try to persuade the client that it was mental telepathy.
Charlie Fox
Charles E. Fox
793 Argyle Rd. Windsor Ont.
519-254-4991 N8Y3j8
www.chasfoxvideo.com
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.
Zane
A lot of them have traces of cesium or other odd agents that were
used to absorb the last bits of O2 after the vacuum was applied.
they otherwise are glass, copper, steel, and micah, and other odd
materials which should not age much. I'd be careful of storing them
to rattle around for fear of damage.
Also though you can peer thru the glass at the insides some of them
can be hard to figure out the number of in 40 or 60 years of
storage, so make sure that you keep them such that their legends
don't get rubbed off in storage. Some of them will have the numbers
applied to the glass via some process that really is indelible short
of breaking the glass, and I've seen some with some sort of white
ink that didn't last the lifetime of the tube (was messed up when I
took it out in the 60's)
Luckily in some cases you can read the chassis to determine the numbers.
Do you have a tester stored with the tubes? Do you have them sorted
by NOS vs. pulls? that is about the only other thing to think
about. and the other bits, capacitors and other parts won't age as
well as the tubes if you have bought and stored them.
Jim