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Originally Posted by Ampico-kid
It's one of those photo finishes and it looks like it's starting to flake off.
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Stewart Schooley has done lots of experimentation over the last few years on reproducing photo finishes.
http://pages.cthome.net/ptf/photofin/photoFinish.html
Long story short, it's possible, but not easy, to reproduce it.
It depends on how much you care about the cabinet, and what's underneath the photo finish. In certain old radios, the wood under the decal is actually a nice walnut veneer, which you can strip and refinish with normal methods (although the grain pattern won't match the original photofinish). In other sets, the underlying wood is cheap stuff that won't look very nice no matter what you do.
If the old photofinish just has a few nicks and little boo-boos, your best bet is probably to touch it up with brown paint and little artist brushes, shoot it with a couple of coats of clear lacquer, and declare victory.
If it is too scarred to touch up, then you need to decide whether to redo only the top, or the whole cabinet. If you are able to strip only the top without damaging the rest of the cabinet, that should tell you which way to go with the whole project.
Or, if that's all too much hassle, you can just put a nice cloth on the top and pretend it's already perfect :-)
Good luck.
Phil Nelson
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html