My daughter and I were cleaning out part of the basement a couple of days ago when I ran across a sealed box that had migrated downstairs.
The box had a name, a city but no address. Ahhh, I remember this one.
I had won an eBay auction last year for a Skillman bug, aka “Coffin Bug,” “Hi Moung BK-100.” The seller was in Canada, and promised to pack it with care. Apparently, “careful packing” in Canada means “loosely wadded newspapers.”
Had the key been something light, wadded newspapers would have been fine. But the Skillman, like most bugs, is a rather weighty machine. The Skillman also has a big vulnerability — the keying lever.
I'm not sure what kind of plastic they used for the keying lever, but its quite brittle It doesn't just break, it shatters. When I received this Skillman, I was immediately wary because the key was thunking around inside the carton. No joy there.
I opened the box and there was my new Skillman bug, the keying lever (half of which is plastic) was in shards. The seller, who had been paid by money order, refused to give me a refund, despite the fact that the damage was the result of poor packing.
I boxed the key up in anticipation of sending it back, refund or not. Well, I never sent the box. It wound up in the kitchen, then in the basement. I never got the refund.
Fast forward to earlier this week. Got the box and upacked my broken bug. I had been Krazy Glueing Vibroplex paddles with success, maybe I can put my Humpty Dumpty key back together again? Worth a shot, I figured.
All the shards of the paddle stayed in the box and I found nearly every piece. A few tiny bits were lost, but nearly all the pieces fit back together like a jigsaw puzzle of sorts. Where's that Krazy Glue??
I only bonded my fingers to the key lever twice in the process of rebuilding the key. Don't need those fingerprints, right? Amazingly, the lever was complete and in one piece. I never thought it possible. All the pieces actually fit, and I was lucky enough that the Krazy Glue bonded like advertised.
I've not had one of these keys apart before, so putting it back together took a little reverse engineering. Since it was in pieces, it came apart easily. Getting it back together took a little thought, but even my butterfingers managed to get it reassembled.
After dialing the key in a bit, it plays very nicely. The characteristic thunking the key makes in operation takes a bit of getting used to. The Vibroplex type keys can be noisy too, but theres is a more metallic sound.
I used the freshly assembed key to check in to the KSN this evening, and it handled well. I had forgotten how well this things worked. For a slower fist like mine, these actually are a better fit than many of the higher speed bugs I have. My kids couldn't tell it had been fixed. I'm happy to have resurrected this key from the “key parts bin,” which was where it was heading before I dug out the Krazy Glue.
73 es CUL … de KY4Z … dit dit