Last week I saw a Philco 620 for sale at an antique mall. Today I went back and bought it. I hesitated because it had been painted white a very long time ago and I figured it would be a pain to strip. The white paint is that old thick stuff from way back. I also noticed a small hole had been drilled in the side of the cabinet and some sort of bakelite accessory had been tied into the speaker wire.
I got it home and started tearing into it and I found that the bakelite accessory is called a "Brush Hushatone", and there is an on/off toggle switch connected (explains the hole in the cabinet). I googled "Hushatone", and find that these were pillow speakers attached to hospital radios during WWII. This was so soldiers could listen to the radio without disturbing their hospital roommates. This probably explains the white paint too.
So, I think my new Philco may have been used by some GI's who were in the hospital during the war. I think this is really cool and it makes the radio special to me. I am glad I went back and got it. My grandpa served during WWII and was injured on the Saratoga.
Other than the Hushatone and white paint, everything looks original. Even has the original chevron grill cloth. Only one tube tested good. The speaker is perfect.
The radio is coated in paint stripper as I type this. I'm going to restore it, but now I think I'll keep the Hushatone in it. I really wish I had photographed it before I tore it down.
Anyone ever hear of a Hushatone? Anyways, I'm new here and haven't posted much, but I thought you guys would like this.
Hi All;
Got any pictures ??
THANK YOU Marty
Might would've wanted to keep it lead paint white, to boot, to keep the "flava". Strange that all but one of the tubes were dead. Huh. Weird. How far into the chassis have you delved thus far?
Looking forward to pictures, maybe you should consider leaving it in white, if that is what was originally used in the WW II hospital setting
Who knows when the attachment was added? The 620 was a 1936 model so it would have been five years old when the U.S entered the war, it could have been added before that time, at that time, or at any time after. Maybe it was used in a hospital or maybe someone added that feature for home use.
There was another aftermarket accessory that was for sale in those days called a "Radiolink", it was a cheap way to pipe in radio programs from one room to the next through a jack installed on the back of the cabinet and through one or more external speakers. I have a set that had the jack still attached to the back of the cabinet and the junk shop that I got it from had one of the speakers that I guess they thought was some type of collectable and was there until the day the shop went out of business. It was just a P.M dynamic in a plain leatherette covered wooden case, it probably never sold because they had $30 on the thing. Not really a collectable much more of a curiosity really.
Regards
Arran
Keeping it white would have been a nice historical option. The problem is that I actually tore it down and began stripping the cabinet before I googled the hushatone. Even if I hadn't, the white paint was in pretty bad condition, and I could never force myself to repaint it white. Plus, even though I have a gut feeling that it was a hospital radio, perhaps, as Arran says, it was done by a private owner? I plan to make it look like new, and I'll leave the hushatone attached, as it is part of the radio's history.
So far, I've only begun stripping, and I cleaned the dust off the chassis. I will probably need some help from you guys bringing this one back to life...
Here are some photos... as you can see, someone did some repair work many years ago. The stripper is struggling with the old white paint. The photo was taken 15 hours after the stripper was applied.
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You might have "milk paint" on that cabinet, and there is a special stripper for that which I'm sure you can locate a source for on the web. Won't come off any other way.
Milk Paint? It may have been. It was the toughest paint I have ever seen. I don't know what kind of paint it was, but they should paint nuclear bomb shelters with it! One entire can of citrus stripper, one can of chemical stripper, one half can of mineral spirits, five rolls of paper towels, six stripping pads, five #0000 steel wool pads and one ruined nylon brush later and it is almost stripped. The white paint would melt into the original finish and form some kind of black goo that was almost impossible to remove. And if the black goo dried, I had to add more stripper and start over. Nasty. nasty stuff...
The good news is that the armor of indestructible milk paint did a great job of protecting the wood underneath it. I will add a photo of the cabinet after it's cleaned up a bit.
Did you try the old fashioned kind of paint and varnish remover, the politically incorrect stuff with methylene chloride in it? I'm currently using it to strip burned on grease off a garbage picked waffle iron. I think that Home Depot sells it under the Kleen Strip brand down in the U.S.
Regards
Arran
The first stripper was citrus based. It barely touched the milk paint. So I used some chemical stripper from Lowes called Jasco. It dissolved the milk paint into sort of a goo-like paste/paint substance, but wouldn't remove it. So I cleaned it up as best as possible with mineral spirits, then hit it with the citrus based stripper again, and that did the job.
Here is the final result -
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And here is the same cabinet with grain filled and toner finished. Ready for clear...
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I screwed up by making the strip at the top dark, but it's too late now. I looked at several photos of original 620s and could've sworn that little strip was dark, but it's too late now. Oh well.. I like it.
I like it. Should finish up very nice.
Thanks! My camera makes it look a lot darker than it really is. In real life, wood grain is visible on the dark areas. I've got some Philco decals coming from Radiodaze, and once they get here, I can wrap it up. Somehow I've got three radio projects going at one time. The Philco 620, a Philco 44 and an old Air Castle tombstone. I've got the electrical work finished on the other two.. I'm a little nervous about the 620, because it looks like it had a lot of work done on it years ago. It might be tough for me to figure out what goes where if it doesn't match the schematic.
PuhPow Wrote:I screwed up by making the strip at the top dark
No, you didn't. That strip should be dark. You did fine.
The colour of that strip seems to differ with really no reason at all, maybe it was the prerogative of whoever was finishing the cabinet on a given day. Personally I think it should be dark as there isn't really any point in having the strip there at all. Sort of like the cathedral cabinets where some have the grain running vertically over the arch and others have it running perpendicular to the arch.
Regards
Arran
What strip are you guys talking about?