List your test equipment "scores" here!

[Cubdriver]

Cool find, THz.  My fingers are crossed that you score som more goodies tonight!

-Pat

[Vgkid]

Some of those tools might still be salvageable. Pliers(good chance) , hexes/files/clamps(yes) screw drivers might still be good, unless the phillips head is mushed.

[TerraHertz]

Cool find, THz.  My fingers are crossed that you score som more goodies tonight!

Thanks. I'm considering it unlikely - probably that was just something the resident had acquired and didn't know what it was. Mostly I'm just curious to find out the history of how it came to be there. At the time I was speaking to an old Asian lady with no English, via a young girl with not-so-great Vietnamese Cantonese. The guy who knew stuff wasn't there.
But you never know.

Some of those tools might still be salvageable. Pliers(good chance) , hexes/files/clamps(yes) screw drivers might still be good, unless the phillips head is mushed.

No really, when I said "light surface rust" I meant it. All clean now, see pic. Only the two feeler gauge sets were far gone, and even they will do as car-kit.

[Vgkid]

Those cleaned up really well. How did you do it?

[TerraHertz]

Those cleaned up really well. How did you do it?

Large diameter steel wire wheel in a bench grinder for most of it. Some concave bits with stainless steel wool hand scrubbing. The files and delicate things like the teeth of the taps, with fine brass wire brush and running water. Then a light coat of oil on everything.

Mainly I wanted the chisels, of which I don't have many already. Everything else was just 'well since I'm doing this, why not?'

[Cubdriver]

Those cleaned up really well. How did you do it?

Large diameter steel wire wheel in a bench grinder for most of it. Some concave bits with stainless steel wool hand scrubbing. The files and delicate things like the teeth of the taps, with fine brass wire brush and running water. Then a light coat of oil on everything.

Mainly I wanted the chisels, of which I don't have many already. Everything else was just 'well since I'm doing this, why not?'

A nice haul, especially considering the price.   

And you can never have too many clamps, so one more is always a good thing.

-Pat

[VK5RC]

 :-+Those look nice chisels, they are hard to find . Some 6 years ago my father died and I inherited his tools, I used a cone wire brush on an angle grinder then Lanolin (Inox Lanox) or recently gun oil.

[Cubdriver]

Can you guys get anything like this "down under"?

http://www.evapo-rust.com/

I tried some out a few years ago and was impressed by its performance; unfortunately I don't have photos.

-Pat

[VK5RC]

Pat re evapo-rust I've not seen that stuff before, a quick look on eBay Our local car+ Supercheap auto has some, I have a mate who has shockingly rusted tools, I might buy him some as a Christmas present. Not cheap 5 litres AUD $85 .

Bought a HP 8903A Audio Analyzer, posted working but arrived with no working display despite being reasonably well packed, "grace03us" sent a good sized part refund on my word alone!
Opened the lid and after a bit of digging around fixing the 1980s HP "clacky button problem" found a loose cable- plugged it back in and she lives. 
The seller seemed such a decent fellow I resent most of the refund!

[Muttley Snickers]

Found this beast listed on Ebay AU and it actually got a bid, it's not mine and nor will it be but check out the question mark in the display, a meter with an "I dunno" feature could be handy for some I suppose.     

[Ysjoelfir]

That's a vintage tube tester! I am looking for simmilar devices for years but wasn't lucky at all, since they always end at a (at least for me) unaffordable price... The questionmark in the meter was to show the transit area in which a tube would work as expected but eventually with reduced power, since theose things most of the time measure just the current going through the tube at the standard datasheet values. You could say that a "?" tube is most of the time perfectly useable, as long as you don't try to squeeze every last µA out of the cathode.

[Muttley Snickers]

That particular one looks a bit sad and is currently at $20 AUD, they pop up occasionally and there was a really nice tube tester listed only a few weeks back that got 1 bid at $30, I was tempted but passed on it as I'm currently putting a valve radio back together otherwise I would have no other use for these and most are fairly big units.

[CJay]

That particular one looks a bit sad and is currently at $20 AUD, they pop up occasionally and there was a really nice tube tester listed only a few weeks back that got 1 bid at $30, I was tempted but passed on it as I'm currently putting a valve radio back together otherwise I would have no other use for these and most are fairly big units.

Valve testers are handy if you have a lot of valves/tubes to test or have unskilled labour that needs to qualify them as good/bad but it's not particularly difficult to test valves without a custom tester, just needs some fairly basic lab gear and some common sense regarding electrical safety.

[PaulAm]

Tube testers are reasonably good at determining if a tube is dead or shorted.  Whether the tube is actually good or usable is another story.  They were also not laboratory instruments and their primary role was to help service techs sell tubes.  The best way to determine the actual characteristics of a tube is to use a curve tracer.  Tektronix actually made one, the 570, but the audiofools have priced these into the stratosphere (one sold for $2K on ebay back in Sept).

There's at least one modern computer controlled tube curve tracer available and it's fairly easy to use a Tek 576 with some additional setup.

[bitseeker]

The seller seemed such a decent fellow I resent most of the refund!

[VK5RC]

Re tubes and testing, when I was restoring my Tek 545 (all 107 tubes I recall!) i got a uTracer3+ from DOS 4 ever, it is a proper tube tracer but has some nice features in that it doesn't test the tube for long at each voltage so you don't have to get too excited re power limits etc. As the HV is only around for a short time (I recall some milliseconds) your chances of 'exciting' yourself also goes down. The biggest issue is you have to build it and get the tube sockets you want. It is basically a computer controlled 3 power supply (2HV,  one for filaments) and 2 voltmeter 2 ammeter unit with a nice PC interface to drive it all.
PS No interest other than a happy customer.

[CJay]

The seller seemed such a decent fellow I resent most of the refund!

I'd feel similar, it's always nice to find a seller who is so fair and makes no fuss about resolving problems.

I guess you can always send a bit back if you feel like it?

[VK5RC]

I always feel I should pay the price agreed at the deal unless it is not as promised, I was a little bit upset when it arrived and it didn't work and sent off a polite  email and he was nice about it. The postage to return it would have been a killer , the seller was happy to strike a fair part refund and when it turned out to be a simple cable issue, perhaps it spent a lot of the trip upside down. I too want to encourage the good sellers with a fair deal.

[bitseeker]

Agreed. Good sellers are few and far between.

[krivx]

Is it worth taking the rust off files? I always assumed it would round the teeth and they wouldn't cut. My father has a box of rusty files, I wonder if I should take a brass brush to them.

[Berni]

Is it worth taking the rust off files? I always assumed it would round the teeth and they wouldn't cut. My father has a box of rusty files, I wonder if I should take a brass brush to them.

I seen someone take a wire wheel to files and then dunk them in acid for a bit to restore and "sharpen" them. But im not sure why would that work, but if anything it would get the crap out of the groves so it can dig in properly. Etching it should round and dull the teeth if you ask me.

[krivx]

I am almost certain that acid "sharpening" is a myth.

[Cubdriver]

I am almost certain that acid "sharpening" is a myth.

That's my thought as well - it would seem that the 'finer' features (such as sharp cutting edges) would be the FIRST thing that the acid would etch away, rounding and dulling them as the post above yours suggests.  Seems like a good way to TRASH a file, rather than sharpening it.  If you can put it into something that would dissolve whatever swarf is trapped in the grooves and NOT the file, that could clean it out well and potentially make it cut better if it's clogged up, but I fail to see how something like that could sharpen it at all.

-Pat

[SeanB]

To derust simply use a wire brush, hand held, and brush parallel to the teeth. On a crosscut file you need 2 passes, to get both angles of the teeth, then wash with some kerosene ( paraffin in the rest of the world) to clean the debris out. Then after that use a cloth dampened with light mineral oil to rub off all the remaining rust, and store where it will be dry. A wooden drawer that has bare wood, oiled with furniture oil, works best as a rust preventer, as the volatile oil compounds evaporate over the tools with time. You can buy corrosion protector tabs that are basically an oil soaked sponge that do the same.

[AlfBaz]

... kerosene ( paraffin in the rest of the world)

kerosene here (kero)

The brush to use on files is called a card brush