13 Mar
2013
13 Mar
'13
4:22 p.m.
On 3/13/2013 4:08 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
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