A Chinese Clothespin and an Australian Gold Mine 

Fellow collectors Dolores and Wayne Dixon live in Wiesbaden, West Germany, but were able to spend their vacation time in China. I was delighted to receive the following letter recently from Dolores and would like to share it with you. 

20 May, 1980 

Dear Marilyn, 

A quick note to let you know that we returned from China with an insulator for you which will be mailed by a friend of ours in the States. There are no markings and it is brand new because insulators in China are used for everything from stringing wires to hanging clothes. They are evidently mass produced very cheaply as we found them in a tiny shop in the old section of Chengtu. Since they are used so widely and evidently must be purchased, there were none lying around under poles, and believe me, we saw thousands of poles! 

Our guides knew nothing about them and we felt they considered us to be quite strange when there were so many other things that could be purchased. All that we saw were already cemented on the pin so that's the way we had to take them. 

We did see a few on poles (usually in the middle of a rice paddy) that were slightly larger and different but could find none of those for sale. Antiquing and flea marketing did no good either as is the case in Europe. It is a non-marketable item here.

 The trip itself was fantastic and we would recommend it to all. We were taken into the interior (Cheng-tu) and from there taken off to one of their sacred mountains where 15 of us were the only Westerners there. It was a great feeling. Hope you like the little insulator and sorry there are no markings. 
Sincerely, 
Dolores 

- - - - - - - - - 

Needless to say, this started me looking for the mailman (Show me an insulator collector who doesn't!) It wasn't long before the package arrived with the insulator. It's a cute little thing -- it's white and it measure only 3" high and 2" across the base. The picture at left shows it still cemented to the metal pin, and I intend to leave it that way. You see? Santa Claus does come more than once a year! My husband is always reminding me he doesn't. Thanks, Wayne and Dolores, for a very welcome addition to my collection. 

About a week later another country was heard from. Robert Chiantelli, of Monterey, California, had been visiting his sister in Alice Springs, Australia, and found what you and I would kill for -- miles and miles of poles full of insulators with no wires on them. He wrote, "They are of no interest to anyone except the birds that sit on them,"

I have three letters from Robert here in front of me and will attempt to condense into one tale all that he said. With each new find he became more enthusiastic and wrote another letter. My eyes are as big as saucers at this point. "The first day out," he said, "I found 29 of them in less than 1/4 of a mile and in less than 1 hour of looking."

I don't know how well this colored polaroid picture will reproduce after being further digested by Crown Jewels, but perhaps you will at least be able to see Robert in the picture! He is kneeling beside six insulators he found, three glass CD 130.7 in clear, straw and pinkish amber, and three white porcelains similar to the CD 130.7 in shape. Robert does not say what markings are on the glass ones, but probably they are either C.C.G. (Crown Crystal Glass) or A.G.M. (Australian Glass Manufacturers). The porcelain have underglaze ink markings stamped on the crown top or side and read KP 59, FB 40 and R.F. LTD. 1944 Ex. The letters stand for company names, and the numbers indicate the date of manufacture. All six insulators came from a telephone line. 

Other glass insulators he saw still on the poles were CD 130.7 in blue (!), CD 152.9 in purple, CD 124.7 in "various colors", CD 121 and CD 121.2 in purple, green, and purple-cobalt blue. "It is possible," he says, "that there are some shaped like this, but I did not have the time to stop. The color was purple. I do not know the CD of this style, but it looked somewhat like a castle." (This is Robert's own sketch.) 

He goes on to say, "If someone wanted all that were along about a mile of highway he could get about 600 insulators for about 4 hours of work. One pole alone had 98 insulators on it. Please pass it on to the readers of Crown Jewels and other collectors that they are just there for the picking up." 

In a letter to Jack Tod (that Jack sent on to me) Robert wrote, "I was also lucky enough to find a stretch of the original Overland Telegraph Line from Adelaide to Darwin and found some of the original insulators still on the old poles. This old telegraph line was completed in 1872. I found out through asking that they were indeed that old. I must have 18-20 that are different in color, shape and embossing." Robert shows a few of these insulators in the picture on the following page.

As a final note he adds, "the colors of porcelains that I have found or have seen varies: from blue (Japanese manufacture?), white and brown to fire engine red. The red ones I saw in Sidney by the airport. 

A few of Robert Chiantelli's old white 
porcelain insulators from the original Overland 
Telegraph Line from Adelaide to Darwin. 

Robert will be at the Bakersfield Show to be held October 11 and 12 and will have a suitcase or two full of traders. Now that I've told you this, I just hope I can run faster than you can! And if anyone calls for me after the Bakersfield Show, I've gone to Australia!! 

For those of you (please) who would like to make shadow drawings of your foreign insulators and send them to me for "Le File", I have included the following. I hope it will be of help to you. It is Jack Tod's method for making the drawings and for recording the markings found on insulators. However, any pictures or other information will be most welcome.

RECORDING INFORMATION ON INSULATORS 

Very good drawings of insulators can be sent through the mail with the use of a "shadow profile" and carefully measured dimensions as follows: 

Figure A. SHADOW PROFILE

Place the insulator over a sheet of paper on the floor directly below a ceiling light fixture. Plumb the true vertical with a length of string. Unscrew all but one bulb in the fixture to eliminate multiple shadows. Prop up the top of the insulator so its axis will remain parallel with the floor without having to hold it.

Now get down on your tummy and carefully trace onto the paper the shadow cast by the insulator. This should look like Figure A at left. Don't tweek up the lines on this profile or add any other detail to it (dimensions, hidden lines, etc.). 

Now make a separate sketch of the insulator as shown in Figure B on the following page. Sketch onto it the hidden lines not shown by the profile. Carefully measure the dimensions needed for us to complete the drawing, and add these to the Figure B sketch as shown. Also measure the overall insulator height, the overall base diameter, and the diameter at some indicated point near the insulator crown. (The accompanying drawings are reduced in size to fit this instruction sheet.) 

If the insulator has a saddle top or other details which don't show up in the shadow profile, try to sketch those details on a separate sketch to show what they look like. Some oddball insulators with protruding pieces may also require an additional shadow profile looking down from the top or a shadow profile viewing the insulator rotated 1/4-turn on its axis.

Figure B. SKETCH FOR DIMENSIONS

Lacking calipers, outside diameters can be measured by placing the insulator between two stacks of books and then measuring that distance. The depths of pinhole and recesses between petticoats can be measured by using a narrow strip of cardboard and then measuring its penetration. Measure or estimate the pinhole diameter (the minor thread diameter near the threads collar) 

Thread pitch (threads per inch) is helpful in attributing foreign insulators, since a given country usually uses one thread size throughout. England and related countries use English-unit threads (threads per inch). Most other European countries use metric threads (millimeters per thread). You can determine the exact thread type and its pitch as follows:

Smooth a small piece of new kitchen foil by rubbing it with your finger on a flat surface. For large pinholes, cut a 1/2" foil strip and insert it into pinhole. Press foil against thread with your finger. For small, deep pinholes, insert a 1/4" foil strip and then on top of that a 1/4" strip of innertube or other rubber (tweezers help here). Insert a round pencil on top of the rubber and press hard on the rubber while rolling the pencil and slightly rocking it back and forth.

Measure from the foil the threads per inch (or twice the number per 1/2") If that doesn't come out to a whole number, measure thread-to-thread in millimeters (or for 3 threads and divide by 3). If metric threads, this should come out a whole number. 

Copy all the insulator markings as best you can, and indicate location of markings on the insulator. On porcelains, indicate type of marking: incuse, underglaze ink, or sandblast. Good foil impressions of incuse markings can be made by repeatedly pressing smoothed foil hard with a rubber eraser. Dry a puddle of glue on the back for mailing.