I opened the box to find a bit of bubble rap some newpaper and a handfull of peanuts,nothing on the sides of the radio. Here is a sad pic of a future project. It is a Stewart-Warner A72T3

That's a serious shame....damn.

Repairable? Hard to tell from the small pic...

When will people learn that wadded newspaper is NOT packing material...and styrofoam peanuts barely qualify.

Is the dial in one piece? No cracks? If not damaged, then the rest of the set should be repairable with some wood glue by someone with experience in woodworking and furnature repair. It won't be pristine again, but should look decent once repaired.

People need to realize that radios and such need to be packed well enough to survive being tossed down a flight of stairs. Really....

I think I can repair it,seems the wood took the hit. "will be packed well" grrrrr I should wait till the last min and leave a neg!

If that's what the seller said, then a Negative is TRULY in order! :yes:

What a bitch !! Looks like a sweet little set, too ! But IIRC, you re-did the cabinet on another set & it looked GREAT. This one should, too. Good luck. -Sandy G.

That sucks, but it's not damaged *too* bad... Even if you can't get that to disappear completely (which you prolly can), it'll still look sweet when it's restored. 'Least it arrived in two pieces and not more, y'know. And yeah, just wait the 89 days or whatever and leave a neg on that f**ker.

well lets put it this way.

i made the mistake by having my 70 pound emerson TV shipped. it arrived absolutly destroyed. worse than that radio could ever be. pix tube impoded, cabnet splinterd, shifted, and cracked. bakelight crushed.

So you know what I did, contacted the seller, filed a claim, she returned the money back as a check, and guess what I did. stuck it right back into the set for repairing it. restored it, and redid the cabnet. but not the bakelight :(

but it works as new. need defl yoke though.

sorry for hijacking your thread. :banana:

Looks like all the joints are popped, bare wood showing at both ends--many of these old radios are pretty fragile, most of the old horsehide glue being eaten along the way by bugs that have hopefully moved on. I once received a small Zenith chairside that looked like a do-it-yourself kit, the shipping caused almost complete disassembly of the case. I just started reassembling, gluing, clamping, and got it back together. Many sellers have no clue what packages may have to go through and how to pack something to withstand shipping. They are the same ones who state, "Works, but unable to tune any stations. Must need a tube."
Dan

Good you got some cash out of the TV but I know it took more to repair the damage done then the money received. I am new to ebay as both a seller and a buyer but I do know that all sides need protection,I use 2 layers of carpet padding and a layer of bubble wrap,if any other fill is needed then it's peanuts or newspaper. I know it looks bad and it's nothing fancy but I know the iteams make it no prob. Whats gets me is this guy has 800+ feedback 100% and he packs worse then me the ebay noob infact it's the worst job I've gotten off ebay. I did notice all of the working radios that hum or must need tube hah

Looks like all the joints are popped, bare wood showing at both ends--many of these old radios are pretty fragile, most of the old horsehide glue being eaten along the way by bugs that have hopefully moved on. I once received a small Zenith chairside that looked like a do-it-yourself kit, the shipping caused almost complete disassembly of the case. I just started reassembling, gluing, clamping, and got it back together. Many sellers have no clue what packages may have to go through and how to pack something to withstand shipping. They are the same ones who state, "Works, but unable to tune any stations. Must need a tube."
Dan
Yeah- know all about those damn bugs. I've got a vintage guitar and they just love to munch. Someone told me about making a mixture of herbs (like
a potpourrie) and place it in the guitar case. That and a regular polish with
good guitar polish keeps the little bastards at bay.... :thmbsp:

well, dont forget you need about a 6 inch clearance from the nec of the tube to the edge of the box with packing material in between.

which this packege lacked, and boom. tube is imploaded

I scored a Zenith TransOceanic portable (Royal 1000) on ebay a couple weeks ago. The radio worked after it arrived at my apartment (as it does to this day; you can't kill these old soldiers easily--they were built like tanks and sound great, which are several reasons why I like early Zeniths so well), but had several things out of place that the seller did not mention. One, the band selector knob was loose on its shaft; two, the cabinet and chassis were filthy and dusty (the chassis looked as if it was pitted in several spots and I swear, I saw some rust somewhere near one of the transistors--this thing must have been sitting in the former owner's basement, garage, attic, etc., unused, for years or decades); three, the BC/SW removable Wavemagnet antenna and the battery case were missing; four, the AC adapter jack was flopping around loose; and last, the dial lights did not work. As I said, the seller made no mention whatsoever in the item listing of the missing parts, the loose knob/AC adapter socket or the burned-out pilot lights. Should have left him negative feedback (for having left out so many details, minor though they were, not to mention the lack of proper packing material--the radio looked to have been hastily packed in a couple layers of bubble wrap, with wadded-up computer paper around the whole thing--good thing the set was built as solidly as it was, or else it would have been smashed to bits by the time it got to me), but didn't have the heart to since the radio worked and looked to be in decent shape otherwise.

It's a shame that a radio survives 40 or more years then gets destroyed or damaged due to half assed packing.I guess just do what I am doing and chalk it up to a learning exp. BTW I started on the recap,this one is my toughest yet,alot ot caps in tight places but if I get it working I will try to repair the wood.

Donny, I am amazed the dial scale of your radio wasn't smashed to bits (likewise the tubes) when you finally got it. The way the cabinet is damaged, I'd have almost expected the dial to be in pieces as well. Whomever you bought that set from must have either been in a terrible hurry to pack it, or else he/she doesn't know beans as far as how to pack something--anything--properly for shipment is concerned. Some folks are like that; they just want to get the thing packed, shipped and out of their way ASAP--to heck with how the item is packed. There have been cases where valuable antiques, not necessarily radios or TV sets, have arrived at their destinations ruined or in pieces simply because the shipper did not use enough or the proper type of packing in the box around, above and below the item. There must be enough packing material surrounding the item being shipped (as has been mentioned here, not wadded newspaper or styrofoam peanuts alone) to keep the item from moving in the box during shipping. As someone else mentioned a few posts ago, items packed for shipping must be packed securely enough to withstand being dropped or even kicked across a floor, which often happens these days. Even delivery services such as UPS and FedEx are guilty of this--I read not long ago in one of these AK forums where FedEx is the worst when it comes to manhandling packages.

Good luck with your Stewart-Warner radio which, as Sandy mentioned, is a very cute little set. I don't know much about them (Stewart-Warner is sort of an off brand, which I am not that familiar with), but I would think it should work well once you finish recapping it. The damage to the cabinet should be easy to repair as well. I was reading on an antique radio website the other day about a fellow who once received a Zenith chairside radio in terrible shape--the cabinet had been all but ruined and was falling apart by the time he received the set. However, he simply reglued and refinished the cabinet; now he has a radio which looks almost as nice as it probably did when new; there's no reason you shouldn't be able to fix the cabinet of your little set with little effort--after all, table model cabinets are a lot less work to restore than consoles.

Once you're finished, I'd say you will have a radio you can be proud of and which should serve you well for many years to come. Many of these old sets can run rings around the small Japanese and Korean imports one can get in discount houses and even drug stores for $5 or less (and the older sets were built more solidly as well in many cases, with the exception of one very troublesome Zenith model which was built on a Bakelite chassis, tube sockets being molded into the "chassis" and all; they were recalled and, according to Zenith legend, were smashed to bits, with no further sets of this kind ever being manufactured by Zenith again--I guess they learned their lesson, but good). I have a Zenith K-731 AM/FM table set in a walnut cabinet I paid $25 for on ebay last year; didn't have to do a thing to it or with it when it arrived here except plug it in and listen--and it sounds great. (This radio now has a prominent spot in my apartment and, needless to say, is the pride and joy of my entire small Zenith radio collection which now stands at five sets.) It proves what I just said about older radios (except those troublesome Bakelite-chassis Zeniths) being better than their newer imported counterparts.





Kind regards,

On the bright side, with all the separation caused by the shite packing job, it’ll be a cinch to clean those 'hard to reach' corners around the dial.

On the subject of clamping, I'd be very careful. In fact, with the fast set-up of today’s modern wood glues, holding parts with your hands (for a minute or two) is usually good enough. If you must clamp something as small and fragile as a radio cabinet -especially I might add, if the corners are held together with a tongue and groove slot- the smaller 'rod' clamps (they look like all-thread w/small plastic clamps) work well and are gentle. A bit of rubber or a wider piece of wood between the cabinet and clamp is a good idea too. I'm still learning the basics of vacuum tube technology, but woodworking is an old skill...one that seems to come in handy with the nutballs (ahem) 'packing' vintage electronics.

Like someone said, it's a shame that something as old and beautiful as your S-W set can survive all these years, only to be damaged by some moron in too much of a rush (to watch their favorite 'reality' TV show?) to stop and consider what they are handling. That's why I like the concept of this page. Future generations will thank us!

Good luck with the set Donny. I'm sure you'll have it 'up and runnin' in no time.

You should definitely contact the seller and try to work it out. It's the only way he will know what he's doing wrong. Some people are idiots, but others just really don't know any better. My worst purchase was an Antique Sound Lab tube amp. The guy packed it in on a newspaper. When I say "packed it on a newspaper", I mean that he put a folded newspaper (as it is delivered to your doorstep) in the bottom of the box. He then put the amp in, and put another folded newspaper on the top! Needless to say, the amp was destroyed.

Mark