victorian chair

[phil]

maybe it's older than I thought. I agree the piece looks of good quality.
the green one is indeed an old piece with no question. Im looking forward to restoring it. The newer piece with all the carving, the carving looks like a lot of work and so I know it could be done today with computerized CNC machining but I couldn't decide how early that might have happened or if indeed it is carved at least somewhat, maybe some sort of production line sequence carving? I'm thinking it's oak but could be wrong. the older piece I think is walnut and I remember the auctioneer saying it was from when that sort of wood was still available.

maybe research could prove the age of the newer piece. Its definitely unusual, being so ornate. the couch she had was pretty fancy too.

most old pieces, when i turn them over the wood has an aged look but i didn't quite get that feeling nor did i feel it was newer than 70's or so.
the lady that gave it to me promised the cushion which isn't shown. so I'll see if she follows up. the two dont; really match but that's ok by me Im not really set on a particular style like I might be if I won the lottery so I have pieces of different ages and styles.

right now Im restoring a lamp radio. it is from 1941 and has a shape like a spaceship and it is both a lamp and a radio which is quite rare.
the case has just a few scratches, more like specks so I found the closest spray bomb color and Ive been masking all but the tiny specks where it is scratched and restoring the paintjob in that way. very little new paint, just enough to hide any scratches. Its working pretty well. I didnt; really want to repaint the thing as it was not that bad so the tiny touch ups seem to be a good solution. of course since it's a radio I am also doing the electronic restoration so that it plays.. fun!

[Manalto]

right now I'm restoring a lamp radio.

Phil, come on. You can't make a statement like that without a photo. Sheesh. I want to see it! Before, during, after restoration! I vaguely recall seeing a grandfather clock radio and maybe a lamp radio but it's all so murky...

So, when you have a moment, could you let us have a look?

[Gothichome]

Maybe it’s one like this.

A 1941 version.

[CS in Low Hud]

Chris from LH has a set that looks similar, I also thought it was much older than it was. It has a gangster connection. Maybe he’ll tell the story for those who were not with us in the OHW period.

Boy, Gothic, you do have a good memory!

Yeah, I have a similar parlor set that I bought off of the elderly woman on a neighboring farm to my parents back in 1998. She was an active local historian, and kept very good records, and she gave me the details in a neatly typed letter (omitting the salacious bits, which she told me in person).

She says that the set is Italian Walnut, and was carved and assembled in Italy in the late 1920's, and then shipped to Baltimore where the buyer could select the upholstery. In the case of this set, it was purchased by her mother's cousin and his wife. He was - she said - a local Baltimore gangster who had sunk his money into racehorses. Anyway, the depression hit, the racehorse empire collapsed, and they divorced. Needing to liquidate everything, they sold the parlor set to the neighbor's mother in 1936. She died in 1948, and her father, after his retirement, came to live with them on the farm in 1957, bringing the furniture. By the time I got it, they were just frames stored in the barn.

Here's a couple of photos:
[img][IMG]https://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s259/saracenihouse/couch-1.jpg[/img][/img]







Best,
Chris

[phil]

those chairs look so comfy ! The carving is really exceptional.
I love old furniture. we used to have a great auctioneer that did estate sales and had a buyer in europe that would fill containers and send them here for auction. I used to go lots and bid low and came home with lots of stuff. I always found it interesting as it was mostly antique stores that were buying so we could sort of get what I would consider a true value on things.
Id like to find a new comfy couch, my grandma had a nice overstuffed sofa from about 1930 with plush burgundy cover. I always thought one like that would be fun and be comfy but they seem a bit hard to find.


That lamp radios is just like mine. same color. They were all the same color, some had the gold colored base which mine doesn't. Its just paint.

it had a few teeny scratches and one small chip which I filled with JB weld. I was considering repainting it and found the closest match I could in a spray bomb.. then I tried masking everything except the tiny scratches, doing just a speck at a time. I just spray the speck then pull the tape off, very minimal and it is working well so I won't have to repaint it. I figured that's better.
the electrolytic caps were replaced already so I just replaced a few of the paper caps. next I want to check the resistors. they are all .5 watt in the schematic but in the radio there are actually a few sizes and types. so I dont; know if it was repaired , sometimes manufacturers used up what they had around. to complicate things some were not the same value and I found a couple of slightly different schematics. it shows a dial lamp, common to most radios but this thing didn't seem to have a dial lamp. It gets a bit confusing because the schematic shows the resistors and the connections , then I look at the chassis and try to figure out what each is connected to. the basic principle is that I just need to read the color bands and measure them with a meter. over time they usually either dont change or they drift to a higher resistance and if they are out by lots it affects the circuit.. common practice is to just change the bad ones. some of the capacitors are stable over time. the ones that look like Bakelite dominos are more stable. the paper caps fail often so I usually just use the shotgun approach and change those.

with experience it becomes easier but Ive been away from working on radios for a while and so I have to reverse engineer it a bit to figure out the puzzle. bit of head scratching and glancing back and forth between the schematic and the actual radio.
It plays so I can test between each. once I'm happy with that I will do the alignment procedure. that makes the thing tune better and adjusts the dial so each station comes in where it should. more importantly it adjusts the sensitivity to be more optimal so the weak stations start coming in better.
pretty much all the post war radios are 5 tube "all American 5 radios". this is no different, so the basic engineering doesn't change too much from one to the next as compared to radios of the same era. on some of the earlier radios they had different ideas and I could observe how they were experimenting with different ideas in the technology of the time.

In most of the radios I've restored I boil the capacitors in wax and remove the guts and put the new component inside the old paper tube to keep things looking original inside. You can't see it without taking the thing apart anyway. I felt a bit lazy with this one so I'm just replacing them. its probably worth about 300 US or 400 canadian so it is a kind of rare model but it'll be Ok like that. sometimes I try to keep things looking perfectly original inside but then it's something I never see again.
the lamp is a tri light. it came with a couple of different shades and I even saw ads where they had a price without the shade. I'm keeping my eye out for something that looks like one of the ones it was sold with but it isn't super critical. It was donated to the radio club and one of the elder members took it home and replaced the power supply filter caps just to make it play and they auctioned it to members that attended that day. he didnt' change the cord and it was pretty rotten so I had set it down on my bench meaning to change the cord and of course that leads into going a bit further with the restoration.
some who do it more can breeze through a set like this. I notice a lot of the old repairs are pretty dodgy from the old radios shops. I dont; really worry about the time, I just like fiddling with it when I have a little spare time to play. I had always meant to set up my bench and gear ( collecting old radio tube testers and signal generators and stuff is a part of the hobby) but I think in the past 10 years or so my attention turned more to the house and other projects. Im still interested in it but I've collected so many project radios that it is a bit daunting. how do you display 100 radios around the home and have it look nice? 20 in each room ?
Ive been selling a few that dont; excite me so much as I go to the club meets to try to make it not so crazy for me. part of the hobby is storing stuff and passing it along. sometimes I buy parts sets and they sit around and sometimes that's handy. with a few that were missing parts I tried to play matchmaker and find others like them to combine parts. with some I've waited and watched for a long time to find one with a good case or one with a chassis that isn't rusty etc.

Ive got quite a few that will be challenging and fun. we used to have more stations and now I don't get so much music on AM maybe a better antenna would help or I can try a broadcast unit and tune to what I feed that if I like. I recently found a car radio tuner that is intended to convert an AM car radio to get FM. I found I could hook it to an antenna and place it near any radio and tune FM by the "loose coupling" (one coil near another transfers the signal) and it sort of rebroadcasts the signal so I can tune these AM radios to FM stations and get better music that way.

of course with the radio lamp it can always be used as a lamp so it has a function I will use. Ive got some that are a table and a radio, others that are clocks and radios. Ive got a grandfather clock radio ( a westinghouse columair) from 1929 that i restored. Ive got two more needing restoration. they are art deco. a lot of the ones I like best are art deco from 1929 to 1936 era. lots have eye tubes and different features. I have a couple with electric tuning. The cathedral shaped radios are neat and a bit more rare so I have a few some needing repair, and then the tombstone radios are neat too. I have a neat philco chairside radio. its an end table with a radio built in.. I'm drawn to these dual purpose things because otherwise it gets to be too much of the same. I found a philco mantle clock with a plug in to plug a radio in so it turns the radio on at a set time.. the bedside clock radios can be fun but i try not to collect too many. Ive got several of the crosley D-25 and a few of the other crosleys. the bakelite ones come in all sorts of neat shapes so I have quite a selection.

I picked up one of those ship clocks on the weekend. it looks like a sailing ship with chrome sails and a clock. It has a couple of christmas lights that shine through the port holes. Its was probably intended as something you put on a TV set as a display. the clock runs. I should probably take it apart a bit and lube it somewhat. These things aren't super rare but I guess they are somewhat collectable and fun. The electric clocks kind of fit in with radio displays and add a bit of interest. I seem drawn to anything with an old plug on it. even some of the wind up ones are fun. Ive even got some neat toasters.. it's a slippery slope;-)

a word of advice to others, If you want to collect stuff , stamps are probably a good option and then you won't fill your house with clutter lighters or watches could be fun.. when it gets to collecting console radios they fill rooms pretty fast! fixing them for money is a hard go so I just do my own. It's very time consuming so it has to be something you do for fun.

my new ship clock is just missing one of the chrome flags and the knob that holds it but at least the ropes are there and the chrome sails and the wooden part look presentable. I paid $50 I don't think it 's worth lots more than that. lots here probably remember these things from when they were kids.
here's a pic of one like it
http://www.jitterbuzz.com/furn/ship_clock.jpg

[phil]

I got the chair free last March.
It was missing the cushion so I waited a long time and she finally included it.
This isn’t super old but it fits in with the antique theme.

I bought the lamp at an auction my cat’s favourite spot is to sit on the radio under the lamp by the window where it’s warm
Yes the windows still need love too

[Manalto]

Nice chair, Phil. The wood trim on the arms is unusual - interesting!

[phil]

yesterday I found a listing for the couch that matches the chair I got for free.
a year or two she had given the couch away, then I got the chair a few months later and a few months after that the cushion for the chair.
https://vancouver.craigslist.org/van/fu ... 54752.html

It seems like a pretty rare item so I think maybe the couch that went for free is now for sale. $220 isn't that much for it anyway.. I asked my manager and she said she wasn't' excited about it as I was so I should probably listen even though I think it would be cool to have the couch and the chair.

I think she'd rather see us get something comfy and modern. to me that means paying too much for overpriced junk made o foam and staples, but maybe it's just my mentality. Im not really bent on victorian. i kind of think that maybe somethign overstuffed similar to this but a couch might be nice too.
https://vancouver.craigslist.org/nvn/zi ... 11130.html

[Manalto]

I always think when they say "asking" that the price is negotiable.

That chair with the broad arms is nice. Mohair is a good upholstery material for northern climates if you can find it in good condition.

[phil]

I think the couch is neat and very unusual but it's just not going to be something I need to have badly enough to want to dispute it. One can only have so many great big couches in a room. Part of me says I should get it while I have the chance but the guy on the other shoulder tells me no, this isn't a dispute I even want to have at all. Her opinion is import to me. I must be growing older and wiser