Well finally I have finished the restoration of the 1934 AWA Radiolette. Mind you I have only done the cabinet, the replacement of capacitors and such will have to wait another day, but this part of the restoratrion took well over 3 months on and off.

When I bought this radio it was in really bad condition, there was water damage to the cabinet and bits where the veener was missing. The water stain was on both sides and the front towards the bottom as you can see from the before pics. Normally I would just strip the old varnish and recoat with a poly or shellac, but the water stain was all the way through the veneer which meant replacing it. The first problem that I had was that I could not just replace the bits that were missing and or stained because the new venner would not match the old, both in grain and colour. The second problem was that if I was to replace all the veener I had to delicatly take the radio apart which is exacly what I did as you can see from the second pic. This was not easy to say the least, hide glue does a good job of keeping it together.

I managed to find some OLD (at least 10-15 years, going from the packaging) QLD Red Ceder veneer and I have finished it with at least 15-20 coats of shellac. I know that most radios were not finished this way but I like the way shellacdraws out the colour of the veneer compared to a poly and its very user friendly..

There will be more restorations to come in future but for now I hope you enjoy the pics as much as I did restoring it.

Cheers
Peter

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