It has been five years since I last refinished a radio cabinet. In that time, I had not only been through a lot thanks to the cancer, but also had managed to forget many of the tricks I had previously learned. (The cancer treatments, unfortunately, helped a lot in making me forget some of my refinishing techniques.)

Knowing that my time to be healthy enough to do this sort of work is growing short, I had decided to try and refinish as many of my radio cabinets as I was able to get to. To that end, I set out an ambitious “wish list” of cabinet projects, mostly Philco sets:

A Philco model 21 cathedral;

A Philco model 46 cathedral (identical in appearance to the 21);

A Philco model 45C “Butterfly”;

A Philco model 16B Art Deco tombstone;

Not one, but TWO Philco model 54C compact sets;

A Philco model 41-KR “refrigerator” clock radio;

A Philco model 42KR3 “refrigerator” radio;

and an Atwater Kent model 627 cathedral which had suffered serious damage in shipping and which did not require refinishing, but needed a lot of gluing and new bottom trim.

You may see “before” photos of some of these projects in the image above.

If time allowed, I also hoped to apply finish to, and install, a new front panel and some key trim parts to a very rare Philco model 52 grandfather clock radio.

I have a few other sets which could use a refinish, but I felt the list above might turn out to be more than I could handle in a three or four month period.

Now you know why I have not been blogging since the latter part of June – I have spent the entire summer working on these cabinets, as well as a few other household projects.

The cabinets I was able to work on often overlapped one another, and sometimes I found myself pausing on one cabinet while I started on another. In other words, I did not work on one cabinet at a time, in any particular order. Sometimes I would strip more than one cabinet at a time, and sometimes I would spray lacquer on more than one cabinet during one morning or afternoon. It all depended on where each cabinet was in the process. Therefore, as you read the stories of each individual cabinet, please bear this in mind.

I will be sharing the stories of these cabinets with you over the next several weeks. I hope you will enjoy these stories – sometimes challenging, sometimes frustrating, always rewarding when each cabinet was finished. I will also let you know just how many of these cabinets I was able to complete.