So last night at 3am I had a visitor bearing gifts.

What are these you ask? Well, they are insulators for a 250,000 volt line, made during WWII out of Pyrex glass sprayed with a metallic oxide to eliminate electrical corona which can interfere with radio signals. They can be rather attractive and are neat pieces of history, many still have date stamps from late 1941 and early 1942 when they were made. Kickass pieces of history.

Here they are the way I got them... Well that's a pretty fucking heavy string, so I had to take it apart. Ten glass discs, plus the phase hanger, which the conductor mounted on. These were used in a pair of ten disc strings on a dead end or corner turn on the line. The goal was to see how many of the ten would be the desirable darker marigold color and mint.


Most of the discs from the string. Gave a couple slightly damaged ones away to a neighbor and the park manager who liked them. Final count was 7 mint units, with five of the seven being the nice dark ones.


One of the dark ones all cleaned up.


Anyway, I'm pretty damned happy.

so you accept gentleman callers at 3am?

Butt plug.

There are gentlemen on WaGuns?

You are one strange individual...............

For collecting historical industrial relics? It's not much different than collecting anything else.

Considering they have historical and collector value, plus look pretty cool, I'm glad someone who appreciates them can get enjoyment out of them, otherwise they just go in the scrap/trash dumpsters gone forever.

They are awesome. Giving some to my lineman buddy when he comes down again too.

Those are pretty cool. My son is in Lineman school right now in Idaho.

I'll give you one to give to him then. Northwest Lineman College has a great little museum with a fantastic collection of early insulators and hardware. Fuckers beat me to a factory demo model of an early porcelain suspension insulator that I wanted for my collection.

That's awesome! Thanks Steve.

Thank Dan, he brought these things to me. I'm just sharing the wealth a bit :) Remind me to show you my 1894 German insulator used on a rebuild of the first commercial AC line in the United States. There is a crazy story behind that line and it's construction.