I had purchased this as an empty cabinet. Later, I found - and bought - a very rough 37-640B tombstone in order to obtain the chassis, speaker, knobs and escutcheon for use in this 38-624T cabinet. Kirk has the 37-640B cabinet now; he said he wanted to practice on replicating photofinishes, and that cabinet will be an ideal candidate for that.
There was a deep groove in the bottom trim which I filled with wood filler. A small chunk of the back corner of the trim was missing; this, too, was filled with wood filler as you see in the photo above.
Some deep faults in the upper right corner of the front panel were filled with wood filler. Later, I will attempt to touch up the light areas with some Medium Walnut toner - but only after the cabinet has been stripped, sealed, and grain filled.
There was a large depression where you see the piece of veneer. The cabinet had been hit with something, pushing the wood in. I thought about what to do about this before deciding to glue on a piece of veneer, and then try to sand it until the veneer patch more or less blended in.
more to come...
Edit: For reference, here are the other two cabinets I worked on this year.
...and discovered that I was wrong about what this cabinet had been originally.
The two identifying stickers are both badly damaged, but there is enough of the model number sticker to indicate that its background was...green, not blue.
Ah ha! A battery radio. So it had to have been a 38-623T or 38-624T originally.
A lot of the tube layout sticker is likewise gone, but there was enough to indicate a vibrator power supply and a few of the 1 volt battery tubes.
Battery tubes, vibrator supply - it was originally a 38-624T. I've changed the title of this thread accordingly.
Hey, Jeff (PhilcoPhan1936) - didn't your cabinet come with a 38-623 or 38-624 chassis?
It was exceptionally...unusually...warm at 10:30 pm tonight. I opened the garage door to let the house garage air out before taking these pictures. After being somewhat cool the past several evenings, it is really warm tonight!
The first coats of lacquer always highlight a cabinet's flaws, and this cabinet has several. However, I think I'll take the flaws over tossing this cabinet in the burn pile at Kutztown.
Letting the stuff dry to a dull haze, I then scraped it off at an angle, then rubbed it in with burlap. Sorry, Kirk, but I have lots and lots of burlap that needs to be used up...and it worked well for me three years ago.
It definitely needs more grain filler along the top part of the front panel as well as the left side and some of the grillebars. The rest seems to be OK when looking at it in bright sunshine.
This wood really has large, open pores! Much larger pores than I think I have seen before.
KCMike, to answer your questions:
I used Deft lacquer sanding sealer. Three coats which is more than I usually apply (I normally apply two), but this cabinet is so dried out and in such poor shape that I thought three would be beneficial.
And I sand after applying grain filler. This removes any remaining filler residue from the surface of the veneer as well as levels the surface in preparation for toner.
I shall continue after lunch, working on the top and sides. My goal is to have it ready to sand and apply medium walnut toner tomorrow after work.
It looks really dark now, but it won't look as dark once it is sanded. The grain filler will have to dry overnight. And as I must return to work tomorrow...that means it has until tomorrow evening to get dry. Plenty of time.
If all goes well...sanding and Medium Walnut toner tomorrow evening!
After work and supper, I began to sand off the grain filler residue.
I sanded...
and sanded...
went through three pieces of sandpaper as they kept getting clogged up with grain filler residue...
(yes, I did scrape off excess until the paper totally lost its effectiveness, at which poinit I switched to another piece of sandpaper, and carried on.)
Finally, the cabinet was ready for Medium Walnut toner!
I applied two coats. Here's how it looked right after the second coat:
A bit darker than I wanted, but the wood was already dark and that affected the final color. (See post #7 above for a comparison.) In person, I think the color is quite pleasing. It will look even better once I get the Extra Dark Walnut on the bottom trim.
The flaws on the front panel do not show in the photos. It looks like some brat whacked it multiple times, and unfortunately that will always show. But as I said before, I consider it a rescue...beats putting it on the burn pile at Kutztown, eh!
On a good news note, the grain on the front appears to be 100% filled! I didn't get the grain completely filled on top as there are some areas where I can see some partially-filled pores. But I think after the coats of clear, sanding, more coats of clear, etc., that any remaining pores will be mostly filled and it will look fine (save for the flaws, that is).
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