From old to new: My Radio project

It is a while ago that we sold my parents house and decluttered it. Up in the attic we found an old Radio. It was not in good shape, though.

Just after we found it

After a bit of research I found out that it is a “Telefunken Operette 7” from 1956 / 1957. The paint was totally flaked-off and after I switched it on the first time I could only here a loud humming. I took it home anyway.

Paint damaged and no sound.

The radio belonged to my grandparents and my mom can remember the radio standing in their living room. Since I have almost no personal items from my grandparents, it was no option to dump it. So, what options did I have? Give it away for a total makeover? Too expensive. Make it on my own? Probably the only option :-). But I had to bring it to a Radio repair company to get the electric done. Some days later I had a working radio on my table and 200โ‚ฌ less on my bank account. But the housing still looked awful.

First try: Pickling the housing

The internet is full of how to repair old radios. But as I found out later (too late actually) it was not that easy. I damaged the veneer due to too much sanding. At least I know what a veneer damage is now. ๐Ÿ˜‰ .

Too much sanding ๐Ÿ™

But I spend hours with it and so I decided to leave it how it was. Actually I was not really happy with it.

Our cat did not care, I was not really happy with the result.

Some month later I decided to try it again, now with paint instead of pickle. I removed everything. All fittings, knobs etc. and spend hours with painting, sanding, polishing, gluing and blow drying (fittings were fixed with wax in the 50th)

It took my more than one hour to remove the speaker fabric
Before and after: The knows were totally discolored
My new favourite tool helped me a lot!

I am done now and I am ok with the result, even though it is not 100% perfect. But with my skills and my tools it was the best what I could do.

Finished, finally. New fabric, clean knobs and fittings

Enjoy the rest of the weekend ad have a good start into the new week! ๐Ÿ™‚

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