Roberts leather strap handles -removal?

[Broomradioman]

Dear All,

I have a the following radios with leather handles/straps that I could do with removing to clean both strap and wood.

R707 (black)
R600 (mustard)
R505 (black)
RIC2 (red)
Rambler (tan) rectangular buttons
Rambler (tan (round buttons)
RIC1 (black)

Any tips on how to remove the straps?

I am a newbie to the collecting of Roberts and Hackers so apologies if this has already been answered!

Cheers

Jim G7NKS Broom

[Tom_I]

Originally Posted by Broomradioman

Any tips on how to remove the straps?

Remove the chassis from the cabinet, and you will see that the handle end fittings are fixed in with circlips. With care these can be removed and re-used. I use a fine pair of long-nosed pliers to grip and pull each of the three little tongues which grip the pin in turn, slowly working the circlip along until it comes off. To re-assemble, just push the clip back on. Flatten it with pliers if it has become distorted.

Probably best to remove the speaker before starting, to avoid damage. Also it's a bit fiddly in the smaller cabinets, as there's not much room to move, but I've done a couple of RIC2s, which are about the smallest model you mentioned, along with the Ramblers.

Tom

[Mike Phelan]

I use the following method tor removing these Spire Nuts.
Cut two or three (depending on the number of "tags") pieces of iron wire from a florist's, about 5 inches long.

Loop them through each tag and gather the 4 or 6 ends together and pull, whilst holding the edge of the Spire Nut down, maybe using something like a 1/4" drive socket.

You can do it much quicker than reading this!

[Tom_I]

Or at a pinch I suppose you could use Mike's method, which I must admit is just very slightly infinitely better than mine.

Tom

[Tom_I]

Originally Posted by Mike Phelan

I use the following method tor removing these Spire Nuts.

Sorry for my terminological inexactitude. Circlip was the first term that came to mind, though the item concerned is not a true expanding or contracting circlip at all. However, I must say that the thingy shown below is what I think of as a spire nut, intended to take a screw, rather than to grip a plain shaft, though I could be wrong.

So what do you call the things that hold Roberts handles on? A quick cast around indicates that manufacturers and suppliers just call them push-on fasteners or sometimes starlock fasteners/washers.

Anybody know if there is a definitive name for these things? Incidentally the Roberts handle ones look most like drawing A in the first link.

Tom

[Mike Phelan]

I picked up on the "Spire nut" term years ago when I saw a lot of the ones that Tom shows in his picture, used on car panels and the like, and the Roberts sort, some with two tags, some with three. All were on the same page and headed Spire nuts.
What the catalogue was I cannot remember.

Sometimes things like this have different names used by different manufacturers, witness circlips and E-clips.

[GJR 11L]

Of course, some Roberts sets have plain copper washers, soldered to the pins for the purpose of holding the handles on there! These are the easiest of the lot to remove, just soften the solder with a slim iron, pull the handle pin out then off you go.