I picked up a Sony 42 inch free from Craigslist out here. I took the CRT out (salvaging the Delta 77s) and brought them to a lead disposal site. I'm in the process of gutting the rest of the stuff and smashing the presswood into pieces but am extremely reluctant to touch the board where the power cord goes in. It's mounted on the left side and has some huge, nasty looking capacitors on it. The television has been unplugged for about a week and I'm wondering if its safe to go anywhere near that thing.

Also, I have the screen and mirror (still mounted in the plastic casing) but the screen appears to be a fresnel with a flexible plastic front. I understand people had problems reusing these fresnels. It would be extremely hard to imitate the way the original TV was laid out (with 77mm lenses extremely close to the FS mirror, which doesn't appear to be 45 degrees). Is it possible to reuse the screen? Or should I consider drafting mylar or the like?

Thanks in advance.

most caps have a resistor across the terminals to bleed off the stored voltage, if not you can take a piece of insulated wire and discharge the stored charge by shorting the terminals.
as for the screen, I would try it first before writting it off. its there for a reason.
you need to work backwards from the 42" screen and come up with a throw distance for the projector you will build inside using the existing configuration of mirror and screen even if its not at a 45 degree angle. I did some calculations, using a 15" panel @ 4' from the screen with a 330mm triplet and 330mm fresnel you will have an image of 43" diag. which should work in your gutted case. check out SPK's thread, he did a top notch job rebuilding his dead RPTV.

TESCORP