Previously I mentioned the purchase of a Manual Bench Riveter, and showed how it was used to reassemble the Tray Assemblies, or "record dividers". I also purchased it for the Program Holders....
I think of the Program Holders as being the Initial Contact Point with this (or any) jukebox, and if I want to make a good First (or subsequent) Impression with mine, I feel these need to be as perfect as possible! The original holders on this unit were in definite need of refurbishing, as they were dull and pitted The longer/lower holder was also slightly bent (as seen directly above the #27):
When I took them to the re-chromer, he said he couldn't service them "as-is", as they were constructed with an aluminum backing plate. And that had to be removed first....
I started with the smaller/upper piece, and soon found that a Dremel tool with a small cut-off wheel made short work of the back side of the rivets:
Thus allowing me to separate the two pieces:
Duplicating this procedure for the lower/longer Holder resulted in this:
I set aside the aluminum back plates, and included the top plates with the parts I sent out for chroming.
Along the way I took measurements of the rivets (hole diameter, head diameter, material thickness, etc), and, again, with the help of the good folks at Hanson Rivets, I purchased enough rivets to reassemble both pieces.
The plating/chroming shop (JR Custom Plating, http://www.jrcustomplating.com/ ) did a FANTASTIC job with all of my chrome pieces, and the two Program Holders can be seen in this picture:
Not only did they do a wonderful job, they also straightened-out the lower/longer holder!
Reassembly on these was a little more "touchy" compared to the Tray Assemblies, as I didn't want to scratch the beautiful chrome.
Parts laid-out (with small Program Holder from "spare/parts" 1452 shown at upper right):
Carefully assembling:
And the results:
In the fairness of honesty I should point-out the fact that I initially had a very slight "issue" with the setting of the Bench Rivter, which under close scrutiny shows-up in the results. You see, the rear panels of the Program Holders are made of a soft aluminum, which easily deforms:
When I was clinching-up the rivets, I quickly learned there is a very fine line between too tight, and not tight enough. Not tight enough is self explanatory, but "too tight" resulted in this:
Semi-circular "dimples" around the rivet head, on my freshly re-chromed panel, caused by my having the bench riveter set too tightly at first. I don't have very many of these, maybe a half-dozen or so, but I'm going to "run with it" for now. Once the entire unit is assembled, if they bother me I can always replace this holder with the one from my other 1452 (after having it re-chromed as well, of course).
(Edit: A few weeks have gone by, and I just stumbled across the pictures of the old, OEM rivets. Apparently Rockola didn't "set" all of these perfectly either, Back In The Day:)
(I guess I don't feel so bad about my"dimples" now!)
One other issue I found is, again, the riveter needs to be set-up such that it clinches the rivets securely, but in order to do so, it causes the rear panel to "smush" a little. In essence, the "nose" of the clincher die appears to be too broad at the tip, and thus it slightly distorts the aluminum rear panel. (Look "up" two pictures to see the rivets in the rear panel.)
Clincher die "nose":
The result of this is that the Title Strips may be a tight fit! (At least the old ones I have lying around here are tight in a few of the slots). However, all things considered, this is not a large concern of mine, as I can either, A) cut my Title Strips a little narrower, B) find a way of slightly tapping-down the aluminum back plates near the rivets, or C) maybe I'll have the tip of the clincher die machined down a little so I can re-do this with the Program Holder from the "spare/parts" 1452.
I haven't decided what to do at this point, but much like the semi-circular "dimples", I'll let this slide for now.
Results of the lower/longer Program Holder:
Next up: Record Magazine ("carriage") assembly and installation.
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