As a long time member of AK but never having been over here I thought I'd introduce myself by showing some pictures of my Western Royal Radio restoration. It just seems more appropriate to post it here than there. Its a Western Royal 78 phono/radio that crosses to a Belmont 533c.
I got this for free as a "hey you want this as well" type of thing when I went to buy a tube amp last year. It's sorry state and AM only capacity made me want to say no thanks but I chucked it in the back of the car fully figuring I'd throw it in the trash as soon as I got home. As irrational as it seems I kinda felt sorry for it when I got home so I tucked it away in the basement. Not long after that I got the itch to do a project I've never done and I thought "what the heck" I'll give lacquer/toner a try but only if I could minimize the expense. Here's the radio/phono in its found state:
It had some serious veneer delamination problems and I've circled the major areas in red below.
Obviously the photo finish decal was toast so after searching around for a solution I decided with my meager skills I'd just use burl walnut veneer instead. After a bit of (understatement) gluing and clamping, a little sanding (once again understatement), some stain and lacquer and some glued up veneer I got her to this condition.
I think the stain on the burl veneer was a bit too dark even though it wasn't listed as a dark stain but I'd already gotten this far so I figured a few more coats of lacquer and I'd call it good. Perhaps a bit more experience here would have helped.
I had an old Grundig console that I bought some grill cloth at JoAnne Fabrics for and in keeping with the limited expense objective of this project I just used some of it here. Obviously it needs something with a more bold pattern/weave but it was all I had at the time.
Can anyone spot where the burl veneer cracked after it had fully dried? Yeah, I'll have some fun filling that in. More experience for the books.
After a bit more elbow grease I got it to the point where it was good but not great and I decided to call it quits for awhile. I plan on revisiting the finish for a final touch up but here's where she's at now.
And finally a shot of the Western Royal playing a Lionel Hampton 78.
Obviously I recapped the chassis and checked all the dog bone resistors. Remarkably I only had to swap out one resistor in the power supply otherwise it's fully stock on the resistor end. Although I'd originally thought that an AM only radio would be useless around here I found the the University of Colorado radio station is AM and it plays old 78 era blues all night on the weekends. Perfect sound and feel for the old Western Royal. As a bonus they play ambient music overnight on the weekdays so my first exposure to hearing Brian Eno on the radio was the old Western Royal.
So all I need to do now is finalize the finish, find some correct looking grill cloth and get the idler wheel rebuilt. I did the cut a groove and use an O-ring trick on it but I think the old girl deserves better. This radio/phono is pretty much the same age as my dad since it was built in the '39 to '40 timeframe, so I now think of it in terms of my old man and what I'd do for him. It would be nice to find a better speaker for it as well since the original wasn't in the greatest shape.
Overall I'm pretty satisfied with my first foray into lacquer and toning. Thanks for reading this overly long and picture intensive post.