Philco 645 - Rust

[Winky Dink]

I picked up a Philco 645 console a few days ago. The cabinet looks like it can be restored beautifully, and the chassis looks pretty good except for a little rust:



I'm open to suggestions on ways to deal with deep rust. The anticipated outcome would be a smooth, metallic-painted surface.

Link to the first few pictures of cabinet and chassis:

https://picasaweb.google.com/coldrb/...eat=directlink

Much Thanks.

[Einar72]

My suggestion is remove all the parts and take the chassis to an auto-parts store machine shop and have it bead-blasted. Comes homewith all the bad stuff gone!

[Winky Dink]

Thanks. I will remove most of the above-chassis parts, and then I'll decide whether I can trust it to a bead-blaster. I'll think about taking smaller parts to a dental lab to see if they'll let me use a small sandblaster.

[Jon A.]

Consider soda blasting, it won't heat or distort the metal.

[Reece]

With any luck that gnawed-on coil is part of the tuned circuit that was used to null out interfering coastal code stations that were close to the set's IF frequency. Those stations are not in use today so that circuit can be bypassed: that is, IF that is what that coil does. Since it's near the antenna connection that's my guess.

[Winky Dink]

! Here's what I did.
Wire brushed loose rust, then naval jelly on all rusted areas. Laid plastic wrap over the jelly to keep it from drying out. Four hours later rinsed off the jelly, dried the chassis, then wire brush, steel wool, and rinsed to remove the residue. Bondo spot putty on the heavily pitted areas, sand the 6-0 wet sandpaper. Then mask and paint.



To get the original chrome-like shininess on the attached tube shields, I masked and painted with, what else?..., chrome paint.



That was a lot of work. It may be lacking in authenticity, but it looks pretty.
And now I have to put it back together again.

[Jon A.]

Wow, that looks sweet. No idea if it looks "authentic" or not, but it sure looks like new. To top it off, might I suggest new wiring?

[Winky Dink]

Much of the wiring is chewed up, so I will replace it all with colors and patterns matching the original as closely as possible.

[Jon A.]

Good call, exactly what I had in mind.

[Winky Dink]

The electronic restoration isn't complete but the chassis is done, so I took some time to put together a few photos showing a good result and some techniques that were new to me. Many parts needed painting or less-than-authentic reproduction, so I gave little effort to preservation and went for "looks nice."

I posted the "before" picture previously, but here's what I started with…



…and here's the finished product.


In retrospect, I didn't need to reproduce vintage parts under the chassis, but I started it that way, and I like doing it. Mostly it was routine stuff, like making dog bone resistor replacements:


Just to find out how it would work, I transformed a Motorola cap into a Philco to replace the raunchiest looking cardboard tube. It worked well, but the adhesives I tried on the paper all came loose when I coated the cap with melted wax. The paper is held on only by the wax coating. If the wax gets too warm, the paper will come loose:



I've restuffed cans before, but this is the first time I needed to make new ones. Rather than try to find authentic Philco cans, I did the best I could with materials on hand…



.. and it looks OK both above and below the chassis:



The shadow meter was entirely new to me. I'm fortunate that this one actually works--at least it shows that it responds to signal by moving the vane. I understand that it doesn't actually move much unless the AVC is operating.



As the sun sets, the radio fills the room with a comforting, warm glow, but my wife thinks the fireplace is more romantic. I'll never understand women.

[Reece]

Bravo!

[7"estatdef]

Very nice Wink!!!
Much rather work on that than the rust mess it was!!. I had a old Admiral TV with the same problem. It had spent some time outside in the weather. It was one of the bakelite console sets from 1948 or so. I did likewise strip it down and masked it up. The gray hammer tone does a nice job. The only thing I'll mention is that because of the rust and painting it just double check the ground connections, mostly rivets. Some of those ground loop problems can be a pita to troubleshoot.
Keep up the great work!
Terry (Radioroslyn)

[TVTim]

Awesome!

[dtvmcdonald]

Exactly how do you do the dogbone things? I can see how using some
modern parts, but getting the size right would be hard.

We had horrible weather yesterday in central Illinois, so I stayed home. Today
work was theoretically cancelled but I went in anyway
to exercise indoors on the stairs. Cold, but immaculately plowed streets,
no traffic, little wind and zero blowing snow. People are getting wimpy. Got home and
the water is off .

[Winky Dink]

The basic process is to make a split mold of a dog bone, put some epoxy putty (or Bondo) in each half of the mold, then squish the halves together with a new resistor inside. Most of the time the new resistor is smaller than the old dog bone. If it's a low-wattage dog bone, then my 1-watt resistors might not fit. Then I either shave off some of the jacket of the resistor, use a 1/2 watt resistor, or use a mold from a bigger dog bone. I think this is a well-known process, but I have a lot of photos and I can put a photo demo together.