1970s Design Indulgence

Review time...

The cleanest, flatest, squarest, individually bagged and sealed 1050 grade 1.2mm thick aluminium sheets you will ever find!

Apart from - that is - it doesn't seem to have a protective film on one side. But then again, they don't advertise it has.

And at only £3 a sheet!!!

That's RS purchasing power for ya!

With anybody else you get inaccurately cut trapezoid sheets that have been stuck to the underside of factory workers boots, and used to skate around the factory floor, just to give it that extra level of ****ed upedness. Great gouges just where you want to place your scriber, which no amount of engineers blue can help you with.

It was a trifle difficult to silk screen the "by appointment to" logo onto items of what we now call vintage manufactures.

Even in monochrome there were those fiddly lines in which inks would dry into the mesh without warning, resulting in a scrap panel and all the pains of reworking.

In addition, the screen inks were still in their infancy compared to what we have available (so long as you buy in bulk and spend a ruddy fortune) today.

Epoxy two pack curing inks as well as UV curing inks are somewhat of a "new" invention (1970s).

So, how did they do it?

Waterslide transfers!

Now, you'll just have to take my word for it, seeing as there are very few 1950s electronics around in their original condition, but as Max Boyce would say, I was there.

It wasn't in the 1950s however. It was in the 1970s when we had to make the best of 1950s equipment because of a thing called "the cuts".

And it wasn't just the "by appointment" that was done in waterslide, and some equipment wasn't "by appointment" anyway, but a lot of the panel printing was done by waterslide transfers. If you looked very carefully you could see a faint outline surrounding each bit of printing.

The DIYer has always had difficulty in obtaining that professional printed panel appearance. And yes, I know there are places where you can send your file, and a few days later a professional looking panel turns up on your doorstep.

But you didn't do that yourself!

We had Letraset and polyurethane varnish, but it didn't really cut the mustard.

But today, thanks to model makers, waterslide transfers can be made at home, provided you have a computer and a printer.

So I'll be trying that.  

We're making this prototype/tester unit out of 5 year old reclaimed 18mm MDF and the top and bottom is new 9mm MDF.

Due to the old MDF being dusty and not as hard as it was (it served as shelving for HiFi System Components), the glue-up isn't as neat as it could be, plus we ought to have a set of four Bessey 600mm clamps, but have you seen the price!

Here it's stood on top of another project we're working on.

The 12mm 45 degree chamfer really opens up the rear panel space, so it will be far less fiddly to get at the speaker terminals, HT fuses and RCA input sockets than the deeper openings I showed a few weeks back.

When I say, "we're working on it" I mean I'm doing it as an unpaid hobby. And yes it is obsession, but it serves another purpose.

After a three years C&G diploma course in which Ryan passed, this is his first time working to high standards of wood machining. OK, he worked at a local joinery manufacturing shop and that was his first time working with actual machinery (they don't let them use machinery on the C&G!), and so I've taken it on myself to teach him - me being a non-woodworker - just an engineer.