[Thursday] Repro batteries

[Chris Prata]

OK, follow me here...

Here's how it works when one has "The Affliction":

At Mystic Engine Show I was able to purchase a brass Perko Battery Powered anchor light with beehive glass lens.  It takes the old big 1.5 volt No. 6 "Ignitor battery" that was also used in so many old farm radios.  (As well as by us nerds in the middle school rocket club).

They dont make those batteries any more but a few people make replicas stuffed with a couple D cell's connected in parallel. I read that modern alkaline d cells at 18 watt hours (max) each exceed the duration of the old carbon batteries anyway.

Never one to let others do really well what I can do myself fairly well (usually after many tries), I started looking for the labels to print, since making the cylinder and end caps and terminals is pretty easy.


I stumbled upon Robert Lozier KD4HSH and he has done a remarkable job making working early dry cell battery replicas. In particular, he has replicated the labels and made them available in PDF. For the No. 6 and other cylindricals, he even made a rotisserie hi res scanner, so flat labels can be printed on a color printer to glue around a battery.

Here is his page (below), and it has lots of links to battery reproduction resources, and downloadable labels for a number of old square and round dry cells from the era we exhibit in NEWSM.

Now we have some ideas for powering working exhibits that need 1.5v dry cell or cells in parallel or series, which can use inexpensive d cells inside a believable exterior.

This is another task we can perform in our upcoming workshop...

Check out his work here:

https://kd4hsh.homestead.com/










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