[unclevinny86]

Well it's been a bit since I've posted as this past spring here in Indiana hadn't been the warmest and driest until recently and life's been busy!  Between the usual spring chores around the house, I finally managed to work in some time to finish out the cabinet work on the 40-180 and finished it up this weekend.  For this being my first restoration, I cannot be more pleased with the results.  Here's what I did and my thoughts on what I thought worked well and what I would do differently the next time:

1.  I first attempted to strip the cabinet using CitriStrip.  It worked "fairly" well in getting at least the initial layers of lacquer stripped, but I found that it became very gummy and difficult to work with the longer you let it sit.  You definitely want to get a thick, wet coat of this stuff on if you are going to use it, and I highly recommend wrapping it in saran wrap to prevent it from drying out too quickly, especially if working with it outside and it's breezy.  Trust me I learned the hard way.

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After scraping most of the CitriStrip mess off the radio, I went back over everything with lacquer thinner and 0000 steel wool.  I think next time I am going to stick with a 50/50 mixture of acetone and lacquer thinner to strip cabinets as this seemed to work best.  Gave everything a final wipe down with mineral spirits as well.

[Image: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/5122...a38d_w.jpg]

2.  I lightly sanded cabinet and speaker grille rails with 220 grit sand paper (don't skimp on sand paper, buy the good stuff).  After lightly sanding, wiped everything down with tack cloth and applied Mohawk Tone Finish Sanding Sealer

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3.  After sanding sealer dried, very lightly sanded everything again and grain filled using Timbermate Walnut wood filler thinned to the consistency of thin chocolate pudding.  Scraped off excess against grain, allowed to dry and very lightly sanded to remove residue from surface leaving grain filled

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4.  Gave everything a final wipe down with tack cloth and began process of toning cabinet.  I bough both Mohawk Ultra Classic Medium Brown Walnut and Tone Finish Medium Dark Walnut as I was going to do trim parts at base in a darker shade after toning overall with the Medium Brown.  However, the Medium Brown ended up being darker than I thought it would be, and I liked the overall color with just that, so ended up not using the Medium Dark Tone Finish toner

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5.  After toning the cabinet, I applied three coats of Mohawk semi gloss clear lacquer and allowed that to dry well.  I applied the new water slide decals and allowed those to dry

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After allowing the water slide decals to dry well overnight, applied the two final coats of clear lacquer

6.  After everything dried, installed the speaker rails, new speaker backer board I made with new grille cloth (dark beige burlap fabric from Hobby Lobby), and reinstalled speaker, antenna loop assembly and shortwave loop in cabinet.  I aligned the receiver per specs and reinstalled chassis in cabinet

[Image: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/5123...53c3_w.jpg]

And as of last night, that's a wrap folks!  I am so happy with how it turned out!

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