Forum Home
PC World Chat
Thread ID: 91156	2008-06-28 00:59:00	Furniture Stripping, anyone?	Roscoe (6288)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
683169	2008-07-01 22:07:00	Does furniture stripping come before or after the table dancing?	R2x1 (4628)
683170	2008-07-01 22:23:00	After the table dancing, but before the lamp dancing (a la Kevin Rudd in New York) :D	johcar (6283)
683171	2008-07-02 11:49:00	Would be interested to hear a bit more about your vintage radios. Do you have many? Just valve? I have a few different models, National upright, Ecko, Golden Knight, Atwater Kent and Temple. I have some of the small (plastic?) mantels, Ultimate and Bell and some early transistors - three National Panasonic. Not certain if any have any value but I think that they look nice. Most are working. My radios were mostly collected or kept because they had special meaning for me. So, I have Golden Knight tablegram the same as the one my parents had when I was a child (and was also the first radio I ever repaired) which is undergoing restoration at present. I have restored the electronics and now have to refinish the cabinet and install a new Garrard record player (genuine 1950 NOS still in box) to replace the more modern crystal cartridge unit fitted in its previous life. I have two Bell Colts, one of which was my mother's, both restored to as-new. I bought the second to get replacement knobs but found it easier to repair the existing knobs by grinding out what was left of the the inner plastic and Aralditing in new shafts cut from F&P stove knobs. From the front they look untouched but they will never break again! Interestingly, the two radios are close together in serial numbers and both have the same manufacturing fault which is an A (linear) taper volume control instead of C (log), which means that you get full volume with the knob barely off the stop. I'll fix that one day, maybe. There is an early '50s Philips mantel given to me many years ago by an old lady I used to look after and since fully restored; a rare version of the UK PYE P35 that was owned by a dear friend who brought it out from the UK. This one was given to me by his daughter after he passed away a few years back. I have a Pacemaker portable undergoing cabinet repairs and electronic restoration that was given to me by a good friend here on PF1. This was the first radio type I ever diagnosed a proper fault on when an apprentice. I also have a large mantel from the late 1940's bought at auction and made by one of the "build them for anybody" radio mills then "house-branded" for the company where I served my apprenticeship. Finally in the valve range I have a Radion from the 1930's bought for me by my wife. In the sold state range I have several large late '60s early '70s National transistor portables of a type I lusted after as an apprentice but could never afford, plus several miscellaneous transistor portables and an Eddystone EC10 solid state communications receiver picked up for $10 at another school fair and awaiting restoration. I also have a solid state receiver/valve transmitter marine radiotelephone bought at a school fair that was made by the company I worked for, but after I left them. They were all hand-built from the bare chassis up, including winding all the coils and this wasn't one I built because you can always recognise your own wiring. Because of the nature of my current occupation I have a very wide range of test instruments available including a triple beam oscilloscope but most of restoration work is done using period Hioki AS100D and AVO 8 meters, Triplett and Philips sig gens and stacks of very old components accumulated over the years. Then there are the valve testers and the technical library!!!! I don't plan on expanding my collection, but I will probably restore and sell a few old radios once I've finished this lot because I want to keep up my old skills. I will restore the odd TV as well and I have one of the very first 10" solid state TVs (metal cabinet) made by Sanyo in the late '50s or early 1960s plus a couple of 6" Sony miniatures from the mid '60s that I will get around to in due course. I restored the Sanyo many years ago so it is probably due for refreshing again. Sadly, though the odd very old or rare type can command prices in excess of $1000, few vintage radios seem to have much value, even restored, and most can be bought for less than $50. To provide commercial, sport, talkback and religion-free programming, I am building a twin channel valve mini-transmitter to be supplied with audio from my MP3 player so with two radios going I will have stereo. That way I can give them all a good run at regular intervals. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
683172	2008-07-02 22:06:00	Billy: Thanks for that. Most interesting. You sound like my type of idiot. Not too many of us left, eh? Although I do not have the expertise to fix the electronics, I can restore the wood, which I will be doing with some. Do you have your radios on display? Mine were hidden away for some time until I bought a large bookcase and now they have pride of place in the lounge where they get many comments. Many people show genuine interest. "Do they work," is a common question. I, too, have radios that have a memory for me. That's where it started and I picked up others as friends heard that I had an interest. I have bought some as well. I don't have any thought of expanding my small collection, either, but if something interesting turns up, I most probably won't say no. The most unusual I have seen is a Philips radiogram. If you looked at it sideways, the shape was a quarter circle. The curved part held the speaker, the dial was at the top and there was a drop down door at the bottom where you could insert a 10" shellac. When you closed the door the needle dropped down and magically played the records. It was, essentially, a large mantel radio. When my mother's estate was carved up my brother grabbed it. How sad.	Roscoe (6288)
683173	2008-07-04 11:25:00	Billy: Thanks for that. Most interesting. You sound like my type of idiot. Not too many of us left, eh? You are bang on with the idiot appellation, you have to be mad to wrestle with 50-80 year old electronics but it beats watching soaps or B-grade movies on TV. I only have the Radion and my Mother's Bell Colt on display at present, but the Golden Knight tablegram will go out as soon as restoration is completed and the house-branded radio from my old employers (they were actually the local radio shop for the district at that time and probably sold only a very small number, probably <50) will go in my office along with the other Colt to provide stereo music. I also have a rather large collection of commonly used valves and a very small collection of special valves including a very early aircraft radar transmitter valve, some radar receiver valves, and one out of a Spitfire/Hurricane radio navigation receiver. I've joined the NZ Vintage Radio Society and the Historical Radio Society of Australia and find their resources useful. Cheers Billy 8-{) Edit: Funny thing memory, sometimes it puts two and two together and comes up with five! I just had a memory flashback 40-odd years to my apprenticeship days and remembered cleaning down a shelf and finding a pile of about 10 glass dial scales with the company's logo on them. and I think I now know how the "house brand" system worked! I believe that they were in fact delivered ready to go radios with a generic dial scale (or perhaps no dial scale at all) and simple slipped in their own scale before delivering to the customer. That way they didn't need to carry any stock other than the glass scales, which would make good economic sense for both the manufacturer and the supplier to the end user!	Billy T (70)
1 2