"Christopher Tidy" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Actually, I was thinking of products from the '50s or earlier, if anyone
can remember?



Eh, eh. ...well, sonny...let's see here, by cracky...scratch, scratch,
spit...

Well, there were Bache Browne spinning reels. They were very expensive
(early reels of the type) but they had thin line fingers made of
stainless that would wear completely through in a couple of years of
heavy use. Bad design, not thought through.

Reminds me of a design Nikon had for potentiometers in some of their pro
cameras. Eventually they fixed it, but oddly enough, not on the most
expensive model at the time.

There were Mitchell-Garcia spinning reels (see what I was doing in the
'50s? g). The big ones were not cheap. They had copper teeth on their
drags that would strip off when you hooked a big fish. I wound up
bringing in a 27-pound king mackerel hand-over-hand. Bad design,
thoughtless use of materials.

There were Winchester single-barrel shotguns. I went through two of them
in two weeks. Their barrels were brass-brazed, badly, onto the locking
lugs. They'd break off when you shot them, with the barrel then landing
on the ground. ****-poor process and quality control.

Does the barrel travel through your face before landing on the ground? :-)

No, the design is pretty fail-safe. Like other break-action shotguns, the
barrel butts up against a solid vertical surface on the receiver. So when
the barrel breaks off of its lug it just falls off. I imagine it could shoot
forward from drag of the shot load and wads before the pressure is out of
the chamber and cause the shell to blow up in your face, but the inertia of
the barrel apparently was enough to keep it from moving that far, that
quickly. Both times I was standing at a concrete trap position -- a circular
pad about five feet in diameter -- and the barrel just landed on the
concrete. d8-( It scared the hell out of me, though.


Stainless kitchen cutlery from the 50s -- even the expensive stuff. It
was made of 18-8 (300 Series) steel, which is too soft to hold an edge.
Poor choice, or availability, of materials.

All of the little bellcranks on a piano I owned. Expensive piano, crappy
plastic. Every one of the bellcranks cracked once they deplasticized.
Poor material choice.

I wonder what process causes the change in the properties of the plastic.
Anyone know?

They often used excessive amounts of plasticizer back in the '50s and '60s,
to keep the plastic flexible. But the plasticizers were volatile. When they
dried out, the plastic shrunk (you've probably seen this on old plastic
parts of mechanisms) and became weak and brittle.


Most portable typewriters -- especially Italian Olivettis. Beautiful
design, but complete crap. As my repairman said, they were made of
"frozen ****."

I remember a few of those. I think my parents might still have one. Looked
cool, in a lurid '60s kind of way

Radiators for most American Motors (Rambler) cars. They leaked when new.

Thanks, Ed. That's an interesting list.

Best wishes,

Chris