Long time no see...

Well, it's been a while. I took a long break for the Passover holiday, but I have tried to get little stuff done since then. Here's what the speaker now looks like. I couldn't think of a good way to clean the magnet frame, and I didn't want to paint it, so I left it as-is. I don't think it looks too bad as it is, even if it does look a bit ratty compared to the fresh paint on the surrounding parts.


I did have a bit of a mishap. I had left the front panel sitting in a nice safe place, but imagine my surprise when I saw what had happened in the last couple of weeks:



Yes, it curled pretty badly. I guess the steam that I had used in getting the veneer off must have penetrated the plywood pretty well. When I left it just sitting, it dried unevenly, and got warped. I wetted it down well, and clamped it between a couple of boards. I'll have to leave it for at least a couple of weeks to see if I can get it straight again.

The following picture shows all of the clamping I've had to do to finish repairing the missing veneer. This repair was on the back side - there are really narrow strips of veneer along the outer edge, that will show when it's re-assembled. I tried cutting small pieces of veneer and gluing them in place, but the scraps that I'm using are very brittle, and I didn't have much luck. Most of the patches came off again, so I decided to just use wood putty instead. I figure that this part will get a pretty heavy coat of toner, so you probably won't notice the difference. I also used some dark walnut stain just to even things out. It looks decent now.


Here's what the front arch looks like now. Not bad from the long view, but there are some imperfections that I'm concerned about.


See that little spot in the picture below? That's some wood putty that I used to fill a gouge in the veneer. Even with stain, it stands out pretty well. After all of the patching that I did to the veneer on this piece (which incidentally looks pretty good to me), I hope I can do something with these spots.



I went to Harbor Freight and got the clamps that I need (unfortunately they were not on sale, so I paid $7 instead of $4. Still a deal). So as soon as I'm done fixing up the front arch, I hope to attach the flexible plywood body.

In the meantime, I'm kind of itching to start on the chassis. Unfortunately my workbench is a disaster, and I need to clean it up to make room to work. This is a must if I'm going to have the room to work on the chassis and the cabinet at the same time. That's it for now.

On a slightly different subject, I call your attention to the link on the right for "Elements of Radio Servicing". This is a really old book that's supposed to be one of the best on the subject. I guess it doesn't matter much that it was written in the 40's, as long as the radio you're working on is older than that - or uses the superhet design that is common to so many radios. In any case, there it is if you want it. I plan to read it in my spare time. Whenever that might be.