The PHILCO Phorum

I have a 37-620CS that needs some veneer work, the top has long strip that has been pealed off and is badly chipped on the end.. So what type of wood am I looking as a replacement? My pic isn't so hot but short of the Gallery I couldn't a real good one.

Just going from the pinkish tone of the splinters, probably mahogany. It would help to sand a small area and take another picture.

Tnx Russ,
Here's a sanded strip I removed from the top. The cabinet is in the shed under some stuff, thinking of working on it in the fall and want to get the veneer before I start on it. Now I just have to find the chassis and spkr  

It doesn't look like you sanded enough to get through to the real color. But I am still going with mahogany. Even if it is walnut you can tint the mahogany to match. It does have more "figure" than a lot of the mahogany veneers sold today.

The Grebe that I worked on looked a lot like walnut until I got further down into the veneer.  I did a bunch of looking around on the web and decided it was a form of mahogany from Cuba, which was very much used here until the 1940's.  The grain is quite different from the typical mahogany we now get - closer to walnut.  I know next to nothing about wood and veneers, but that's the conclusion I came to.  Could be yours is the same.

Yes that is what I am thinking.

You can get figured mahogany.

Probably French walnut, unless these are radically different from other late 1930s Philco cabinets, plain cut would be my guess.
Regards
Arran

That could be too.

In reality, it is not going to be the color you want in the end. Either (any choice) is going to have to have toner on it. As long as the grain look right, you can make it work.

There is a moratorium on the import of Cuban mahogany, there has been for decades, and it's due to it being overlogged, not because of the political situation in Cuba, so it would be near impossible to find real Cuban mahogany veneer, and even if you did you would not like the price. It's a bit misleading calling it Cuban mahogany because the trees were found throughout the Caribbean, it's probably a name some marketeers came up with and it stuck.
  I'm pretty sure that the veneer used was French walnut as that seems to have been the species of choice on the majority of 1930s radio cabinets, including Philcos, with more exotic species used for highlights in bands and inlays. It is also a brownish red colour, but unlike Cuban mahogany it is readily available, though not as available as American black walnut.
Regards
Arran