MAC's Believe It Or Not!

Reprinted from "Crown Jewels of the Wire", July 1989, page 22

Believe It Or Not! my column is back after a long vacation. Mrs. Mac says its time to get writing again, so here comes another article by this Scotsman!

CD 143 has always been a little bit of a puzzlement to me, what with Type I, Type II, Type III and Type IV listings in the price guides. Imagine my confusion when Eric Halpin appeared with his CD 143/730 display at the Central Regional in Cedar Rapids with a representative of each of the ''22'' known mold styles, Believe It Or Not! Fortunately, Eric was patient with me, and I got a real education about one of most interesting and pervasive styles in Canadian insulatordom.

I got some pictures of a few of the styles that I hadn't seen before. Maybe they'll help clear up any confusion you might have about the small Canadian beehive.

Figure 1. The short style threaded (CD 143) and threadless (CD 730) counterpart.

Figures 1 and 2 show one of the transitions that the beehive took during its long history. The threadless beehive appeared in two basic styles: the short squat style with an almost perfectly spherical dome, and the taller style with a tapered dome. Each is pictured with its threaded counterpart, an indication that the early threaded pieces were made with threadless molds and a reworked plunger. All four of these insulators fall in the scarce to rare category.

Figure 2. The taller style threadless (CD 730) and its threaded counterpart (CD 143)

The other transition piece as Canada came into the threaded era is pictured in Figure 3. It is the double threaded style, with two continuous threads, offset by 180 degrees, running down the pinhole, as opposed to the normal one continuous thread, an example of which is pictured on the left. Notice that the pitch of the threading is much steeper in the double threaded style, meaning that the thread moves further down the pinhole in a single revolution. I do not know of any special pins that were manufactured for this style which is interesting considering the concept of this double threading is very different from the regular process. This is one of those cases where I wish I could put color pictures on every page. I've seen a number of these double threaded pieces in aqua, but this one is a beautiful yellow olive green. Not to be slighted, the high dome on the left is royal purple.

Figure 3. On the left is the high dome (CD 143) in royal purple and
on the right is the double threaded (CD 143) in yellow olive green.

Enough about the inside of these gems. Let's take a look at the outside surface. Except for the high dome Withycomb (not pictured), I thought all of the horizontal withy's came from basically the same mold. Not so! Figure 4. shows the difference distinctly. The insulator on the left has 16 rings above the wire groove compared to 19 on the insulator on the right. 

Figure 4. Two horizontal ridges CD 143 showing 
the 16 rings (on the left) and the 19 rings (on the right).

By the way, the spiral ridges below the wire groove on both pieces have a right hand thread. Figure 5. below shows two more significant mold varieties. On the left is an insulator with rings both above and below the wire groove. (Rings make only one circumference of the insulator, while spirals are continuous all the way down the insulator.) This is an extremely rare item! And, just to add some complexity to the ridged styles, the spiral below the wire groove on the insulator on the right has a left hand thread.

Figure 5. CD 143 (on the left) has "rings" above and below the wire groove,
while CD 143 (on the right) has "spirals" below the wire groove with a left hand threading.

Believe It Or Not, that's a lot more than I knew about the small Canadian beehive just one short display ago. Hope it's been helpful and informative for you too. Many thanks to Eric for sharing these gems with us.

Just to left you all know, I will be at the Allentown National cleverly disguised as John McDougald. I will be at the Crown Jewels of the Wire table with Mrs. Mac and will have my camera ready to take pictures of any of your "Believe It Or Not" insulators. I hope that you will be attending the show and will stop by the table to say, "Top o' the morning to you, Mac!"