Radio From Hell
 

Sometimes, you just feel sorry for a radio. Such was the case with a Zenith 5-s-29 tombstone radio that I got at auction in a large pile of radios. This set was just in awful condition. In addition to a rusty broken up chassis, what the previous owner must have wanted on his tombstone was a thick layer of grey housepaint.

The paint was applied without any thought, just brushed right on over the dial glass and the grill cloth! About half of the veneer was missing, so this was possibly a fix to cover that up.

In spite of all that, I happened to have some extra caps, so I did a quick recap, and the set worked! Considering that the tuning cap was crushed (I had to run a file through the separate plates in order for them not to run up against one another and short out) and the clothes pin holding the voice coil lead in, this Zenith wanted to live! But considering how much labor was involved, and the expense of veneering the set, I put it aside.

A few months later, a coworker wanted to know if I had any radios to sell, preferably a wooden tabletop. I said he could have this one for the cost of materials. He agreed, and I got to work. Here is the cabinet after I took the trim off for stripping.

Attachment 165423

I used heavy duty chemical stripper to take the paint off, and found the veneer unsalvageable. So I ran a belt sander across the whole thing to take off the old veneer. Did I mention I pulled this radio out of a mud puddle, having sat in the rain all day at the auction? Well, that means the cab was separating every which way. Over the next week, I clamped down the cabinet and used lots of wood glue and putty to fill it all back up. After all this, and a bit of paint for the insides, this is all that was left:

Attachment 165422

Tune in later, as I have a bit more to do.

Nice save :thmbsp:
Not many would take up this challenge.

Are you going to re-veneer it ?

Pictures aren't working for me. :(

Sam,

Are you still having issues seeing the photos?

To continue, there wasn't much left of the cabinet at this point, but my veneer had arrived. I bought a large sheet of flat cut and cross cut. There were originally some strips of really fancy stuff around the base, but I could only buy it in a large quantity at a high price, so I nixed that. This is a flexible paper-backed veneer stock, and you use contact cement to attach it. You put a good coating on the contacting surfaces, and while the stuff doesn't feel especially sticky to the touch, when they come together, they are together-permanently. This time, I diluted my cement with a special thinner, and that made it all go together much more easily. Already, the cabinet looks a great deal better:

Attachment 165444

Sad to say it, but the veneer really was all that was holding the cabinet together- a lot more work needs to be done.

This has all the makings of a wonderful "Sow's Ear into Silk Purse" story...Good for you !!

Wow, nice job! What brand glue did you use and how did you bend that veneer? Veneer softener?

I typically order my veneer stuff from Constantine's, and the glue/thinner is their house branded stuff. This veneer was fresh, and extremely flexible, so it went right on without any special treatment. While you can get away without using the glue thinner, you risk your raw glue clumping, which translates out to a lump in your finished piece. This is the first piece I have ever completely redone the wood on, and I am pretty happy with the results.

BTW, the wood on the face does have a pretty bad color mismatch, despite the fact that they were adjacent to one another when I cut them from the sheet. Oh well, we'll try to match them up during the staining process.

Yep. That didn't work either. I keep getting a "you're not logged in" screen when I click on the link.

Sam, I'm not sure what the problem is, I have tried viewing these posts on several computers (both pc and mac) and as long as I'm logged in, I can see them. I add these files as an attachment that VK loads for me so I can drop them into my text. This may be out of the norm, as it seems that whenever I view anyone else's pictures here, they are in a discrete box at the bottom of their post. I could try posting in that way, if someone could explain how it is done.

Sam, sounds like a login cookie problem. Try clearing your cache, and your stored cookies for Audio/VideoKarma. That should clear up the "not logged in" issue.

Didn't work.

Well, with the cabinet coming along so well, I put that aside to work on another issue: missing trim.

Looking at other photos of this set on the net, I quickly saw I was missing three pieces of trim, all of the same ribbed type like I still had on the front of the cabinet. I needed two smaller pieces across the top, and a piece to go onto the grille, that had to be a bit thicker and curved at the ends-without a woodshop, what was I to do?

I opted to cast the parts I needed using my originals as a guide. My brother and I used to make castings as kids using nothing but Play-doh and hot glue. We actually always kept a gallon of home made doh handy for just such a purpose. I decided to make a mold from play-doh, and cast in JB Weld epoxy. After casting a few pieces, I found that by altering the 1:1 mixture of the two part epoxy, I could make it slightly flexible, which would be handy in tacking it onto the cabinet, as JB weld would normally shatter under such conditions. Here are two such pieces in mid-cast:
Attachment 165453
For the piece that needed to be curved on the ends, I only needed to curve the Play-doh mold in the direction I wanted. My brother and I used to call this "active casting" and it is a pretty cool way to custom alter a mold. The pieces I needed came out with a few expected bubbles, but with a quick application of wood filler and a neat sanding, the finished pieces were ready to go onto the cabinet. Would they match okay?

LOL - Is there anything JB Weld can't do?

Seriously, nice approach. I looked into casting kits a while back and was scared off by the prices. Mold material, release agent, casting resins and so on. Way too much for making a couple parts like you're doing.

Yup, you might get better results from dental alginate or anything from Smooth-on, but it's tough to turn down the miracle properties of JB weld-it even captured the wood grain nicely! Total cost per mold: about two dollars.

I had a test mold of this stuff sitting on my desk at work, when one of the machinists happened by. He told some other folks about what I was up to, and it broke down into a contest between the engineers (who thought this was doomed to failure) vs. the machinists (who really liked the idea). Well, when the mold was pulled, and the remaining play-doh scrubbed away, everyone was amazed. I can see this being really handy for replicating knobs.

In fact, I forgot to mention that two of the Zenith "Z" stamped knobs were cracked and missing pieces. I built up the empty areas with JB weld, let them cure and filed them down, and they will look perfect when they are lacquered.

Leadlike from Lancaster,

Pictures! Could you please run a series of pictures showing how you made the molds, molding process, unmolding and final product? I could surely use this method and I'll bet others could. Thanks!

Reece
Cleona, PA