Gosh, that skirt is thin at the edge. Did these get nicked/broken frequently?
I've seen more than a few like that. The ones that really used to get a beating were the older RCA and Gates remote board knobs, which was probably the result of the someone tossing the board in the trunk of the car after the ball game.
BTW, the other knob I would like to reproduce is the ones on the Stereo-80, which are available at mega-bucks if you really need them.
Maybe the skirt needs another 1/16 at the edge.
It might not have to be enlarged. There are polymer compositions that are used which are extremely tough. Having made some items for another project, I think that a material can be used that would not crack even if dropped from 10-foot and hitting the edge.
The hard part will be to find a company that will cast a small lot of knobs reasonably priced.
It also has a hand stamped RCA 4 in a circle stamped on the bottom of the box. RCA sure did like to make thngs seem official.
Yeah, you should have seen the drawing room that was trashed in 1985(?) when RCA sold to GE. Even a 6-32x.2500" philips screw had its place in the archive. A friend who worked at RCA said that drawers and drawers of files were tossed out at the closing. Between us, I got some of the RCA/FCC radio/TV files, including an original KPO station license, but about 95% of the company's history went into the dumpsters.
I would have loved to have gotten my hands on the blue prints for the metal fabrication of the RCA BC2B, BC3, BC5, and BC7A consoles.
It reminds me of a funny story. In the late 1980s, after RCA had sold, I was working on a diplexer that used inputs of 3-1/8" EIA flange. The diplexer suffered a RF burnup at the bullet end, and the 24" section of inner needed to be replaced.
The inner in that line section had a closed end at the opposite end, with a brass Allan head screw going through the closed end into another line section to mate. Taking a normal Allan wrench and getting your fingers inside the inner to get the screw loose was not possible.
The solution was to go to a hardware store, and get the appropriate size Allen head wrench. I cut it apart at the 90 degree bend, and welded it to a piece of 3/8" steel bar, and at the opposite end put a 4" long handle. Now I had a "T" wrench to get that d@%n screw out of the inside of the inner.
After the repair was done I decided to keep this big "T" wrench, but to match it to our RCA facility I took a number tap set and put MI-860103 into the tool as a joke. The numbers were the date of manufacture, 1986 Jan 3rd.
Along comes one of my buddies from RCA Tech Services, and he spots the tool and asks where he could get one after he consults the RCA part list and finds no such item. He had the same problem other facilities reaching the captured screw.
I mentioned that I thought we got this from the Marlboro antenna range and it was probably left over from Project Aspidistra, then let him on to what I did. We had a good laugh, and the wrench is still at the station, tywrapped below the diplexer, and has been known as the "Aspidistra wrench" ever since.
This is how the wrench got it's name
Aspidistra.
