Holey Grille

[Eric H]

That's grille, not grail.

The grille on my CTC-10 Wynnwood has nice big hole punched in it along with some other snags here and there, luckily it's just made of Wicker so I was able to find an online Wicker/Rattan store and order up some new material.

Wicker like this is measured by how many strips of lattice there are per inch, six in this case so that's what I ordered, turned out to be pretty much exactly the same material (50 years apart), of course the color is different so I will have to find a way to add some color to it, maybe some stain. Also the old grille has some random strips of darker color throughout, I may be able to simulate that using a stain marker pen that's darker than the rest of the material.

In other news I was able to obtain one of the small knobs that was missing, found it (five of them actually) in a large lot of knobs on eBay and asked the seller to sell just the ones I needed for a fair price after the $30 lot didn't sell.

[Steve D.]

I understand staining the new wicker a darker shade. But also adding the even darker stripes may be tricky. If you have enough material, experiment with it before attempting on the completed initial stain.

-Steve D.

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by Eric H

I will have to find a way to add some color to it

I have used tea to darken grille cloth.



I used some test patches of cloth and a couple of types of tea to pick the darkness and color blend. Not very scientific -- I put each test patch into simmering water with the tea bags and pulled it out with tweezers once in a while to see how dark it was getting. The result depends on the absorbency of your material, of course. The cloth I was replicating was tan with a very faint rosy tint, so I used one bag of black tea and one of Red Zinger.

Once you have the desired background color, I suppose you can make the stripes with stain (or dye) and a marker or artist brush. This could be practiced on your test piece, too, assuming you have enough extra wicker for experimentation. I have been told that Fiebing's leather dye is good stuff. I bought some to try in a future project: darkening the worn areas in a molded repwood panel on an RCA World's Fair radio.

Regards,

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[kvflyer]

Phil, playing devil's advocate, I wonder if tea will retain its color? Or would something like Ritz dye work? Oh yeah, to they still make that dye?

[Phil Nelson]

I sold that radio 10 or 12 years after I dyed the grille cloth, and the color looked the same. That's an unscientific sample of one, so take that evidence for what it's worth. Many commercial dyes (including Ritz) are available, too. I used tea bags because we already had a bunch. I had read about it somewhere and was curious whether it would work.

Phil Nelson

[Eric H]

I managed to get the material on the speaker board today and attempted to give it some color.

I used toning lacquer but didn't really have the correct color, I used some Light golden oak and then a misting of "nutmeg" (yes, that's the color) but it's too orange, I can remove it with some thinner and try again.

It's a little hard to be sure what color it should be, the front of the old grille is darker than the back side but that can be from dirt and age or possibly some type of colorant RCA put on it, it also appears to be lacquered.

I think some plain Walnut toner would be about right, it's basically just a brown color with no orange or red tint to it, the stripes are just a darker shade of brown done by weaving individual strands of darker wicker. I can add stripes but they will have to be solid, I won't be able to skip over the area where the strips cross over each other like it was originally.

It's hard to tell the colors from this picture but it's the best I could do indoors.

[Electronic M]

The original sort of reminds me of burlap...