I am rebuilding a 1920's set from a collection of parts. I am seeking recommendations as to suitable material to use for the front panel and any recommended suppliers.

Joe

Do you mean a coffin radio and that gloss black panel material?

If so, you could use 5mm black acrylic sheet. It looks authentic

http://warringah-plastics.com.au/materials/acrylic/

They will cut it to size for you....

Thanks Ian will give them a call and yes it will be a coffin when finished

Joe

Hi Joe, it may not be applicable at all but have a look at how I made a "1930's" 4 valve Reinartz radio from parts scabbed out of the junk box.
Look in the special projects section of this site "Fred Lever's 1932 4 valve Reinartz for 21017.
There was a precursor to this article about 6 months before "Making a 3 valve Reinartz receiver" where I got into all sorts of trouble trying to use directly heated valves and fumbled about with circuit ideas.
The final set worked very, very well and the tuning coil was the key to all.
Cheers, Fred.

Hi Joe,

If you have an electrical wholesaler near you they may have both hard rubber sheet and Bakelite panels available. Both materials are still used when making custom fuse boxes. Hard rubber sheet was extensively used as a radio front panel material in the 1920's.

I found out about hard rubber sheet when I had a broken front panel looked at by a friend who regularly makes test nests for electronic test equipment. He put me onto the electrical wholesaler path.

Regards, Frank.

Thanks Fred and Frank - will down to the electrical wholesaler tomorrow, and Fred I always read your special project articles always learn something from them

Joe

Jfb,
How did you go with the hard rubber sheet? I need to source a sheet of ebonite for a 20’s radio, this hard rubber sheet sounds very similar.
Murray

Hi Murray,
I used 5mm Acrylic sheet which I obtained from a local sign writing company as recommended by Ian. It's perhaps a tad too
shiny but looks and works quite well. My preference would have been the switchboard material but the local electrical wholesaler had
nothing suitable but it's only a small town here so limited choice.

Joe

You can get it in a satin finish which might be more authentic.

We used this stuff recently for some sloping desk mount brackets for tablets. Just a sheet bent to a half-open-book shape. Warringah Plastics were very helpful.