Friday, July 6, 2012 — Earlier this evening I just wrapped up a 5-week online college course that counts toward the Masters’ Degree I’m seeking. Yeah, imagine a semester’s worth of content crammed into 5 weeks … it sure filled up a lot of my time, but I think that was by design. Anyway, its done! Woot!
Since the course began, I have not been really active pursuing additions to ye ole key collection. My eBay activities have been pursuits of everything but keys — hard drives, jewelry, a new kitchen clock, etc. I’ve started to make amends however.
Just bought a J-45 leg clamp key, which features a J-37 key on the leg clamp mount with cable. It’s minty clean, too. I’m going to remove the J-37 from the mount (gasp!) and use it for a key project I’ve had in mind for several years.
J-37 Iambic/Straight Double Key. The project I have in mind is not original; it is one that I’m hoping to copy. As the photo shows, I want to replicate a J-37 iambic key coupled with a J-37 straight key on a single base. The key in the photo was built by Joe Miller, K4DZM, of Lexington, Ky. The photo was taken at Field Day 2009 at the Anderson Radio Club Field Day site. I saw DZM’s key and fell in love with it!
Joe told me he’s built several of the keys in the past, this one being the last that he made. The J-37 makes a much, much nicer iambic paddle that the venerable J-38. In the photo you can see that Joe uses the pivot holes as anchors for the iambic “paddle.” This anchors the key well and eliminates the somewhat goofy “L” brackets that are most J-38 iambics use.
Joe also said he had the hardware to the keys gold plated at the manufacturer for whom he worked at the time. I’ll admit I was skeptical, but the the hardware finish isn’t brass, it has to be gold plating. The best part is the quality of the operation of this key. The J-37 makes a superb iambic key, superior to the J-38. What better to pair with the iambic than another J-37 as a straight key??
I have picked up a couple of J-37s in the last few months, however what I found is that the keys have painted levers, brass hardware, wear, scratches and such that they don’t look worth a damn next to the brand-spanking new J-37s I bought for the iambic part of this project. I bought a mint condition Speed-X rectangular base straight key and was going to use that (its a first-class straight key, love using it); but using the Speed-X kind of ruins the appeal of the all J-37 combo key. I had to have a J-37 that matched the first two. I found one on eBay earlier this week that was identical to the first two, which were also J-44 leg keys. Snapped that baby up! I probably have enough J-37s now to make a couple of combo keys, but just one with J-37s that match.
I purchased a piece of 1/2-inch brass stock that I’ll use for the base. I’ll paint the base in black wrinkle finish similar to Joe’s. I don’t have the exact dimensions, but from the pic I can say the base is nearly 4 inches by 4 inches. That’s going to be close enough (though the depth may be a 1/2 more to allow room for terminals). I’m not sure when I’ll have time to start this project; the first job will be to size the base and prepare the hardware. One thing neat that Joe did was to hide the wiring by having it hidden along the inside curves of the keys and entering a very small hole to the underside. The bottom bolts that secure each half of the iambic key to the base must be drilled to accept the keying arm — and they must be long enough to allow proper positioning of the keying arm.
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In other eBay business, I have a couple of keys discuss in my next post — a homebrew one that I have had for several weeks, and a Speed-X Model 515 I picked up for next to nothing. Stay tuned!
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