The Historic District

Here's the latest radio cabinet I've completed. It's a Zenith.

What a great looking cabinet Al. I can just picture a well to do family huddled close by listening to a thirties radio play. Or as backdrop scenery in a Fred Astare movie.

yowza, what a piece of art! what is the wood species? does someone have the guts to install? how nice is it that your lot in life is to restore these beauties!
...jade

Thanks

The cabinet is mostly walnut veneer, with some poplar, and photoprint (the darker parts, excluding the base). This one is all natural with a clear coat, except for the photo print and the base which is dyed poplar.

I do these for another business that does the electronics, dials, etc. I do on average two or three a month. I currently have two waiting. They are even more beautiful when put back together.

I just recently gave away the chassis dial and other parts of that same radio because I never had the cabinet

it looks great!

The holy grail radio is the Zenith stratosphere.
http://www.radiomagonline.com/misc/0082 ... adio/28912

and the other real famous one was featured on "The Waltons." often coined the "zenith Walton" it was actually quite out of place on the TV series because the series depicted a struggling family int he 30's but the radio was a status symbol even then. it's a big tombstone.

I just had given to me a philco that has a similar style. Sadly someone used it to put plants on and some of the veneer is curled up. It's repairable but getting the veneer dead flat again is going to be a real challenge. here is a link of a fairly similar one.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/73 ... 9ba636.jpg

The veneer is pretty thin and some of it isn't veneer at all it is faux. Luckily the faux parts aren't the worst for wear so it should be possible to repair the waterfall top without touching the faux bits. you can see some faux parts just to the left and right of the slats that make up the front. a casual passerby would think it is veneer but if you strip it you are in for a headache.

Beautiful job on the Zenith. we made our own radios in Canada back then so not a lot of them make there way this side of the border. It's nice to see such a nice job on the refinishing.

A thing of beauty! We were an Atwater Kent house,

and I was always partial to my Hallicrafters.

These are all gorgeous! Back in the day, your radio was not only the one piece of home entertainment, it could also be a status symbol!

Stunning!

i once got the brain fart idea that I couldn't afford an AK breadboard, they usually go for a thousand or more. So I went about collecting parts on Ebay. I got every part to build an Atwater kent 12C except one part which is the two tube island to the right of the pics. If you look close you can see it is very similar to the 2 tube island to the left of it but the one on the right has a larger knob and slightly different shaped base. I did find a spare of the one second to the right so i could do a close replica but it wouldn't be quite right without that base and it is hard to find.

the coils inside the bases are fine coils potted in tar so I might need to find or make substitutes. they are usually open. I have some nice Honduran mahogany to make a new board and we have a local museum with one I can copy. at this point I can't decide if I want to wait and hope for the final correct part or cheat a bit and use the wrong base.
the breadboards were expensive in the day and they exposed the tubes to display them rather than hiding them in a cabinet. anyway here is a pic of the 12C that I hope to build.
earlier models didn't have this last stage and it was used to provide a higher power output to run a speaker rather than headphones.
http://www.nixie.dk/~jthomas/4910.html

one of my latest aquisitions is a broadcast turntable from a CBC radio station. It is missing the two cartridges and the needles. it is designed with a second tone arm to play 16 inch transcription records and the motor is way more robust than most turntables. I got the cabinet with it, and it is about the size of a dishwasher and heavy. the radio stations used them 24 x 7 so they weren't fitted with a dust cover. wWe have one in our local radio museum so I can compare notes and they might help with restoration or want mine for parts. here is a picture of theirs in the radio both. they broadcast but on a low power so they can tune all the radios in the museum to their own station.
http://www3.telus.net/burnabeans/studio ... trolLg.jpg

mine is a bit more like this one , a bit older. It's not exactly a thing of beauty but it has some importance from a radio heritage aspect.
http://www.cafr.ebay.ca/itm/Vintage-McC ... 1714348718

I also have a tape player. its the same size and in a wooden cabinet. from birmingham and called a bradmatic.
this is one of the earliest reel to reels used for studio recordings, Mono of course. 1952. it came with a really interesting recording about rebuilding birminhham after the destruction of the war on old acetate recording tape.
here is a picture of the reel to reel
http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/atta ... 1331704546

Wild! You never know what'll roll out of the barns around here.....