May 31 - May 3

I've switched to a weekly format at this point as in the next few days the digitizing point of this project will be beginning. So, this week was mostly learning how to deal with the spools that are broken, at least the possibly salvageable ones. In a previous post I showed this photo:

When I removed the paper and looked at this spool earlier I felt like this would be one of a few spools that may not be repairable at all. However, the broken wires were looped around each other in an attempt to keep everything together (I suppose that is what the paper was for as well). So this indicated to me that at some point someone perhaps thought this was repairable. I spent about an hour untangling the mess of broken wires until I had the broken pieces all separated out from the intact wire that is still spooled. In the end I had four separated wires of varying length. One length was quite long at maybe 7 feet, the others were much shorter.

I made no attempt to splice these yet in the hopes I can find a way to run those bits through the wire recorder to determine the order they would go in. It seems that push to shove I could just splice them back together in an unknown order and then get them in the right position after they are digitized. 

With what I learned here I think there is really only one spool that will not be repairable. Just for fun I am going to post a picture of that spool before signing off. My next step should be familiarizing myself with the wire recorder and then beginning digitization. 

Unfortunately I could not get the canister open on this horribly destroyed one (it was a bear to open the other day even). So I can't show the full horror show inside this container. However, just seeing all of the wires poking out should show the state of disrepair. If I can get this open again and if I can even peel away the mess of loose wires I doubt there would be much to salvage. I'm saving this for last in the digitizing process as I am sure I am in for a major headache.