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Thanks in advance to anyone who can help shed light on the best way forward.
I've been fascinated by old school violet wand or violet ray devices from the first half of the last century. These were a quack device promoted for any number of magical medical cures, but I'm more interested just in how cool they look.
Wikpedia details their operation as:
A typical violet ray device consisted of an ungrounded, electrical control box that controlled the interrupter and housed the magneto coil, and an attached bakelite or other handle housing which contained the high voltage coil and an insertion port for attachments. Glass, evacuated tubes of varying shapes and for different therapeutic uses could be inserted into the bakelite handle to apply the resulting current to different parts of the body
I just picked one up which could be working, but have yet to plug it in as it has probably never been serviced and it's probably 80-100 years old. These can be quite simple on the inside, there is a youtube video here of a slightly different style of wand here, which someone has replaced the condensor with a more modern capacitor. I would like to give mine a service, but my biggest challenge is currently just getting into the thing.
I'm attaching images showing the basic state of the thing (apologies for the blown out, blurry one) - the cord is frayed where it goes into the bakelite body, but this only appears to be the sheathing around the two main (insulated) conductors. The plug is as old as the hills and is something I plan to replace.
There is a ridge at the end of the body, where the cord comes out, which might be a seam or a way to get inside, but it doesn't appear to rotate as it might if it's threaded. There is also a small access hole for factory defaulting the device possibly releasing some kind of catch holding the end cap on?
Very much hoping someone has some experience of these!
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