08-07-2011, 10:44 AM
(08-07-2011, 10:10 AM)Tedzed1 Wrote: Hello David, what a wonderful restoration, I'm envious
How did you refurbish the tuning scale to such a high standard?
Thanks for your kind comments, but I'm not worthy of them!
It wasn't difficult - it's a very basic dial. It was beyond redemption, so I just noted the dial markings on a drawing, (no digital camera or PC back then!), stripped the dial back to bare metal, primed it and sprayed it in a similar colour aerosol to the original. Then as I said in my earlier post, I used Letraset rub down lettering, which fortunately was in an almost identical plain font, then oversprayed it with several light coats of clear lacquer. Luckily, there were few station names to apply - just 'Home' and 'Forces'. Prior to the war there were several 'regional' stations such as Northern, Western, Midlands etc, all transmitting on different frequencies from different locations. Had that continued during the war, it would have greatly aided enemy aircraft in direction finding. Want to bomb Manchester? Tune into the northern region and follow the signal. So by transmitting the same programmes, Home and Forces, from different locations, thoug enemy aircraft could still follow a radio signal, they didn't know the actual location - it could have lead them to Birmingham, Manchester, London or wherever - not to a specific target location.
As to the speaker, it's 6" with the OPT mounted on the speaker, and there are four c/s machine screws through the baffle board holding the speaker on the board with nuts on the back. The baffle board is covered with fabric, so any sized speaker with any type of fixing would be fine, but the nearer to the original the better. The one that Chris illustrates would be ideal.
As to the cabinet, as I recal, I just sanded it down, gave it a coat of sanding sealer, cut it back with 0000 steelwool, then applied paste wax. I managed to leave the transfer on the top of the cabinet in position.
As Tony rightly says, the design of this set was more about the government of the day sending a subliminal message to the public, that 'belt-tightening' was the order of the day, and anything that smacked of ostentatiousness was frowned upon.
David
