It seems that Vector turret 9 pin sockets are hard to come by. At least, my search for them has come up empty handed. Fortunately, turret 7 pin sockets are still available, and since the turrets themselves appear nearly identical, I thought to transfer the turrets from a couple 7 pin sockets onto new 9 pin sockets.
Thinking that this may be of interest to others, I will post a short description of how I went about this: The turrets are, as I'm sure most of you all know, mounted to the underside of the socket by a single brass rivet that has been spin-peened. Since removal of the turret requires drilling out the rivet, it can no longer be used. Thus I made some rivets from 1/8 inch brass rod, by peening a head on one end (that I annealed by heating to a glow in a propane torch). Rivets this long require support while peening with a ball peen hammer to prevent them from bending during the process; I drilled a 1/8 inch hole in a block of hard maple and sandwiched the maple block between two pieces of scrap steel bar that had 1/8 inch holes so that the rod would be supported its whole length and its diameter confined at each end (to prevent the other end of the rod from peening and being difficult to extricate from the maple block.
I tried to peen the other end of the rivet when the turret and socket were assembled, but found it to be unsatisfactory. Therefore, I threaded the end of the rivet 6-32 and tapped a couple small round M-3 brass nuts 6-32. I cut the rivets extra long so as to have something to grab with a pliers while tightening the nut and prevent the rivet from spinning (I cut off the excess after the nuts were tight and the assembly secure). I am attaching a photo of a NOS 9 pin turret socket I've had lying about since at least the early 1960s flanked by 2 converted sockets.
Thinking that this may be of interest to others, I will post a short description of how I went about this: The turrets are, as I'm sure most of you all know, mounted to the underside of the socket by a single brass rivet that has been spin-peened. Since removal of the turret requires drilling out the rivet, it can no longer be used. Thus I made some rivets from 1/8 inch brass rod, by peening a head on one end (that I annealed by heating to a glow in a propane torch). Rivets this long require support while peening with a ball peen hammer to prevent them from bending during the process; I drilled a 1/8 inch hole in a block of hard maple and sandwiched the maple block between two pieces of scrap steel bar that had 1/8 inch holes so that the rod would be supported its whole length and its diameter confined at each end (to prevent the other end of the rod from peening and being difficult to extricate from the maple block.
I tried to peen the other end of the rivet when the turret and socket were assembled, but found it to be unsatisfactory. Therefore, I threaded the end of the rivet 6-32 and tapped a couple small round M-3 brass nuts 6-32. I cut the rivets extra long so as to have something to grab with a pliers while tightening the nut and prevent the rivet from spinning (I cut off the excess after the nuts were tight and the assembly secure). I am attaching a photo of a NOS 9 pin turret socket I've had lying about since at least the early 1960s flanked by 2 converted sockets.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Ops! It looks like I somehow inadvertently put the first few words of my post into the thread title--sorry.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.