Sunday, July 24, 2011, 2:10 a.m. — Over the last couple of days I’ve been cleaning up some of the keys in my collection. The last one I cleaned was a 1955 Vibroplex Original seen in the accompanying photos.
It isn’t a flashy key, not by a long shot. The grey-base Original was sold from mid-1950s through about 1980, and they are very commonly seen on eBay. In fact, they’re an excellent value for anyone wishing to give a bug a try. The gray-base keys aren’t considered very collectible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good keys.
This particular key is solid and in very good shape — save for the base. There are some chips on the gray wrinkle painted base, which due to the light color, really takes away from the nice looks of the key (chips in the old black japanned base weren’t nearly as visible).
It was sitting on top of a shelf, and had collected a lot of dust; the base was dirty due to the fact I had never actually cleaned it up. I picked it up off eBay in 2007.
I tore the key down, leaving the keying lever in its pivots and stripped the base of everything but the nameplate. I washed the base, scrubbing it with a nylon bristle brush until the crude came off. The gray base isn’t unattractive when its clean. I dried the parts and reassembled the key, and its been sitting at the operating position in the shack since.
I put the key to work Saturday without meaning to.
I was tuning across 20 CW and heard a strong 1-call area station calling “CQ SKCC.” He was operating about 13-15 words per, which is about the ragged edge of my copying ability at present. He called and called, and I finally tuned the rig and answered him.
We had a nice 30-minute QSO. It made me realize how rusty I am on CW (note to self: work more CW). The key did fine, the operator screwed up a few, though!
The nameplate was dingy and wouldn’t come clean; it was like it was stained or something. I had to take Flitz metal polish and shine it up to clean it. The nameplate is nice and shiny now, but its unnaturally shiny compared to factory fresh. They put some sort of varnish or shellac coating on the nameplates, I assume to keep them from tarnishing. The nameplate looks better shiny than it did before, if that’s any consolation.
Nice, commonly available key … a bargain-basement way to get your feet wet using a bug.
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