39 RCA, 57 Zenith, and 47 Admiral

[Adam]

So back in the spring of 2012 both my cats jumped up on a shelf loaded with radios at once, and the shelf came down, most of the radios fell and broke. Most I parted out, but now I'm getting to fixing two of them.

The cabinet for the 39 RCA was really damaged beyond repair, but I managed to pick up another one in the bakelite, rather than the plaskon cabinet. The chassis in my first radio was undamaged except for the ballast tube. I had already recapped it and replaced the bad rubber insulated wire. The new chassis had a mostly disintegrated speaker, but was otherwise complete. And the new radio had pushbuttons where my first one didn't. And that unusual cylindrical dial indicator was cracked on the new chassis, but good on my original one.

I swapped the push button mechanism onto the chassis of my first radio, along with the ballast tube. I also swapped the volume control from the other chassis, as the radio originally had a twist-on switch, and I had changed it for a pull-on one when I fixed it years ago.

I was able to repaint the gold numbers on the dial scale by painting that whole area, then wiping it off with a lacquer thinner soaked paper towel. But I can't do the same with the "RCA Victor" in the center of the cabinet, because it isn't carved into the cabinet like the numbers on the dial scale are.

The first 3 pics are the composite radio I put together from the two. The second two pics are the chassis I didn't use from my second radio after I took parts from it, and the broken cabinet of my first radio.