Both ends have holes for screw mounting. The inside flange is permanently attached to the clear plastic tube. The outside flange is removable so the tube may be shortened. The flange also has two holes for screws to fasten it to the wall. In addition, the removable flange has a set screw to hold it firmly to the plastic tube.
In actual use, the TV twin lead would be controlled by screw-in insulators and they would be set to keep the lead away from metal and would be able to form a drip loop, if that was necessary.
The normal, brown, 300 ohm twin lead used polyethylene that was not affected by sunlight.
Posting from the newsgroup rec.crafts.metalworking as always.
3049) Interesting. Two of the four (two at 90 degrees from each other) have locknuts, and thus are expected to be kept at one particular setting for a while, while the other two are expected to be more frequently changed.
Looks like a sphere being held, and perhaps 2-1/4" diameter at a guess. Is that a billiard ball?
But it sort of looks like it is designed to stress test the ball, or to totally break it, likely using the larger pair of cups once the smaller pair of push pads are holding it in place.
3050) Some kind of adjustable transformer -- very early and experimental based on the kind of wire insulation used.
Multiple taps on the round ended part which slides in and out to adjust the coupling.
Also two multiple tap coils inside the box.
I see no terminals on the sliding round coil, so I will assume that the tap switch adjusts how many turns are shorted across.
The other two coils, then, would give varying impedances depending on where the moving coil is positioned. Likely intended to adjust the balance of AC between the two, perhaps as a position sensor.
3051) Clamps onto something square (by turning the two handles), and serves as a bench-top holder for the object.
Is there a thread on the horizontal handle shafts, or is the entire grip from the angled plates.
3052) Strange pliers. Almost looks as though it is to crimp lead seals on things like power meters.
3053) Now, *this* one I *know*. (Just the first photo is sufficient).
It is a "Rolls Razor", and this one is missing an important part.
The cover to the left is a honing stone, and the one to the right is a leather strop covered with jeweler's rouge. The two are keyed so each fits only into one side of the housing.
The part standing up in the center is the razor blade, with a guard which flips back and forth.
The handle to the right is slid back and forth causing the blade to rotate so it either moves edge-first on the hone side, or edge last on the strop side.
You would strop it before every shaving (just a few strokes), and hone it only every so often.
The one thing missing is the razor handle. which normally lives nestled inside the strop/hone handle, but in normal use slides over the back edge of the blade and clamps down by screwing the handle.
All in all -- a very nice long lived device for shaving, if you shave. I used one for years before I switched to a beard and saved minutes of each morning. :-)
3054) It looks like a clip-on handle for some kind of cookware.
Is that red a soft plastic dip, or a hard enamel coating?
But I would like to see what it clips to, since it does not look that secure. Perhaps if it was one of two it could be used to lift something in a symmetrical way.
Now to post and then see what others have suggested.
Not just *any* razor blade, nor even a single-edged razor blade. It has its own custom blade (shown in it, but not close up), which is essentially like a section from a straight razor blade, with a socket in the center of the back edge to bayonet onto a spike sticking out of the cross-bar. The blade is a desigend in part of the system, not something from the drugstore. :-)
The upper view in the second photo includes the blade handle (stuffed in the stropping handle) which appears to be missing from the one shown in the puzzle.
"DoN. Nichols" fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@Katana.d-and-d.com:
Don... as is the case with pretty much any iron-core transformer, shorting turns (in a low-impedance coil) has the same effect as shorting the whole coil.
The contacts weren't intended to 'short coils', just to select taps.
I have no idea what it was originally for, but it's obviously a variable inductor of some sort -- maybe for tuning LF, ELF, or ULF radio, or for an experimentation bench.
One could use an extra standoff to make a drip loop, but it would be easier if Radio Shack designed the exterior flange with an elbow.
I've replaced the exterior twin lead on people's houses because the polyethylene had deteriorated. Sunlight resistance seems to be relative. A treated tarp will last far longer than an untreated one, but the treated tarp will last a lot longer out of the sun.
My antennas used about 3 feet of twin lead, from the antenna to the amplifier. If I had reception trouble, I'd probably have to replace the twin lead. The rest was coax.
The instructions note that condensation even on the few inches of twin lead in the tube could affect reception. Entering at the basement would mean a lot more wet cable than entering under the eaves. If the TV was not in the basement, it would also mean a greater length of cable, which could cause noise and ghosts on UHF.
If the house was built in the 1960s with the carport adjacent to the basement, I imagine the carport was attached to the house. In that case, I wonder if it was even feasible to have an antenna cable enter under the carport roof.
Thanks! Sounds like this is probably correct, I'll pass it along to the guy who sent the photos. I found an ad that shows the tube, it's in the middle at the bottom right on this page:
The color of the winding reminds me of telephone wire, so i thought of a pupin coil first. Then i thought of an antenna matching circuit. I seems to be a part of a radio receiver:
Beside my toilet sits a 39-ounce coffee can. If I sold my house and the new owner asked why the can was there, it would be wrong to tell him that when I brewed coffee, I scooped from the can by the toilet.
The can holds a plunger, which people who bought toilets in the 1990s often need.
If the house in question had existed in the 1950s, when people had little experience with antennas and just wanted VHF in black and white, a homeowner might well have run his antenna cable in at the basement and drilled a hole big enough for a tube because he saw it at Radio Shack.
By the 1960s, people who put up antennas wanted UHF and color. With 800 cable companies in operation, a Columbia resident might not even have installed an antenna. If he did, it's hard to believe he would have made the mistake of running his twin lead to his TV by way of the basement.
The present owner asked not what the tube was but what the hole was for. The slits in the grommets look wider than TV cable. Deformation of the rubber could prove it was used for twin lead. If there's no deformation and the carport is attached to the house, it seems unlikely. If there's a 220V outlet in the basement, the homeowner may have had a compressor to power tools in the carport.
J Burns fired this volley in news:l8g313$vqu$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
You obviously know little of Columbia, SC. IF he lived dead in the city limits, he might have had cable. If he lived more than eight miles outside the city limits, he would have still have been on crossbar telephone service, and likely not even KNOW that there was such a thing as "cable TV". It wasn't until after 2001 that ordinary DSL got up to Blythewood, and that's only ten miles north of the city. Winnsboro (another ten north) was four years later. NOBODY in Winnsboro had cable as recently as 2002; satellite, yes, but not cable.
Besides, in that area of the country, the 'qualified technicians' would have routed twin-lead anywhere they could run it, including in steel pipe, underground. It's as 'backwoods' as you can get. A significant sign of intelligence for someone there is that you don't let the drool run all the way off your chin before you wipe it off with your sleeve.
I forwarded the compressor theory on to the house owner, haven't heard back from him yet concerning his thoughts about it being used for either an antenna cable or compressor hose. I guess the only way to really know how it was used would be for him contact the former owner.
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