My First Full Restoration of an Antique Radio!

[vortalexfan]

Hello Everyone a few years ago I was given a 1932 U. S. Gloritone Model 99A Cathedral Radio which was made in Marion, Indiana by the United States Radio and Television Company which that Company's base of Operations was about 2 hours south of where I live and it had some parts sourced from CTS which is an Electronic Components Manufacturer based out of Elkhart, Indiana which is my hometown, and CTS is still in business to this day making electronic components.

So when I first got this radio someone had already done the electrical restoration to it, so I didn't have to worry about that, but what happened was that when they tried picking it up to move it they carried it by the front of the radio and accidentally put their fingers through the original grille cloth and through the original speaker, and the original finish on the cabinet was shot as well.

So I repaired the original speaker using brown coffee filter paper and diluted Elmer's Glue, which worked perfectly.

And then I completely stripped the old varnish and stain off the cabinet using citri-strip which took several sessions to get the old varnish and stain completely off the cabinet.

I finally took some Minwax #224 Special Walnut Stain and put 2 coats of that on the cabinet and then I applied 2 coats of Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane with some light sanding using 220 grit sand paper in between coats of polyurethane.

I also had my dad glue in the new grille cloth for me using spray glue after I had used the original torn up grille cloth as a template to trace out the and cut out the new grille cloth piece.

I then finally put the radio back together and tried out the radio and it works perfectly, I was able to find an oldies station locally on the AM Band (as this is an AM Only radio) and listened to some oldies on it a little bit.

Below I will post some before shots and some after shots so you can see the transformation, the first two pictures are what it looked like when I first got it (minus the damaged grille cloth which I took out of the cabinet right away so I could look for some suitable replacement grille cloth on eBay) and the last four photos are the after shots.

This project took me 5 years to do because I kept running into snags that made it so this project kept getting put on the back burner and also I kept getting other projects that were easier to do than this was so finally after 5 years I got this radio done!