Do you own any old appliances?

Post Reply New Topic

appliance: a device or piece of equipment designed to perform a specific task.

Are weapons appliances?

It's not what I had in mind but if it causes the firing of any missile or has moving parts, then yes. Please tell.

I still have the digital clock I built in 1976. At that time they were relatively rare!
It uses the AC line frequency as a reference. Most clocks no longer do that.

Alas it fulfills none of those criteria: it's an indo-persian Katar from the 1700's.

Looks pretty much like this:

A Heathkit Shortwave Radio Receiver, Model GR-64:



This is a low-end receiver sold in kit form from 1964 to 1971, and it originally sold for $39.95. It covers AM (550kHz to 1620 kHz) and shortwave (1.5 MHz to 32 MHz) in four bands and utilizes four tubes (e.g., "Thermionic Valves").

I wanted to build a shortwave receiver kit like that but they were discontinued by the time I was ready.

Did you assemble it?

Yes. It took almost 16 hours from start to finish. Then I realized I was hungry and the sun would soon be up...

Sounds like good times.

Brilliant!

I still have a late 1950's rangefinder film camera - a Kiev 4 made when Ukraine was still part of the former Soviet Union (it's a copy of a 1930's German Contax camera). It still works beautifully, even the light-meter, and I run at least one roll of film through it every year to keep it from seizing up. I love the sound of the clockwork whirring when you release the shutter.

I have a few old appliances.

I have a Chambers oven in the kitchen that was made in the 1970s. I had to replace the heating elements a few times but it still works fine.

I have a Jenn Aire countertop range from the 1970s in the kitchen that we have used for over 40 years and it still works.

I have a Maytag washing machine from 1986. It still works but I had to repair it several times.

It looks like a quality bit of kit.

Wow, our cooker is 40 years old too.

The original German design was just about the best small (by olden days standards) camera that money could buy in the late 1930's. The Soviet copies are a bit hit and miss, as they cut a lot of corners to build them cheaply for quick export income; but if you get one that still works at all, it's likely a good one that'll keep running forever with a bit of TLC. As we say in the UK, it's "built like a brick sh*thouse" - you could run it over with a tank and still take pictures with it! I take very different pictures when I use it compared to a digital camera, too - the old discipline of conserving frames of film and using the range-finder focusing really concentrates my attention on the subject.