RCA 621ts Restoration

[vts1134]

Works of art indeed Sandy. I still like my GE 801 a bit more as far as aesthetics but the 621 is an amazing design.
I still haven't been able to find a replacement for the bottom of the electrolytic cap I broke, and not wanting to remove another multi-stage can until I finished that one, I decided to start on the paper caps. I was surprised at how much easier it was to restuff the paper caps than it was to rebuild the electolytics.
My wife got me a new soldering iron for Christmas so I used my old soldering gun to melt the old wax and cap out of the cardboard tube. Then I melted and cleaned the wax off of the outside of the tube. After I had a clean empty tube it was ready for the new cap.

Perfect fit!
After putting the new cap inside the old housing I filled the ends with hot glue and shot a coat of lacquer on the cardboard to shine it up a bit and repel dust (the idea came from Hugo Holden's amazing 621ts restoration http://www.earlytelevision.org/holden_621.html, although he used varnish).
There was one cap in the horizontal output section that had been previously replaced with a modern cap. You can see my restuffed cap just to the right of it.

Luckily I had saved all of the caps that I removed from the last set I recapped for just such an occasion and had a replacement value for it.

I restuffed a total of six caps tonight and honed my skill of filling the ends smoothly with glue towards the end. The rest of the paper caps should be no problem. You can see the six caps all towards the top of the picture below. I'm really happy with the look of restuffing versus just cutting the old caps out and replacing them with something that just doesn't look original. Well worth the effort!