[Arran]

Joe;
Sometimes it's not just the species they used but the cut, Philco cabinets in the late 1930s and 1940s used a lot of quarter cut, or quarter sawn French walnut (or satin walnut?) and the grain is more parallel rather then having a pattern similar to fir plywood. The best analogy I can give is it's like the difference between quarter sawn oak verses plain sawn oak boards in a hardwood floor, the quarter sawn has a straighter grain, but also has those flecks across that some erroneously call "Tiger Oak". The strips are also narrower, like maybe 5'' across.
I have bought veneer from a hardwood supplier before, but the last time I got some, and I got a lot of it, was from a guy in Fleabay who sold surplus veneer left over from fitting boats, and private aircraft cabins. I don't know if he's still on fleabay, but he had no problem combining shipping, and even threw in some Santos rosewood veneer so I could fix up some Canadian G.E KL-500s I have. One that I got off of him was some Australian, or Queensland walnut, something that was used in a lot of Rogers and DeForest Crosley cabinets, I suspect that may have been using eucalyptus as well, which is lighter in color, but have no confirmed that.
A lot of G.E cabinets, in the U.S and Canada used Sapele veneer, which looks like mahogany, I'm hoping to contact a local snowboard company to see if they have any, they make boards with fancy marquetry in them and I only need small chucks for that job. My main issue in all this is I don't have a workplace set up for cabinet repair at the moment, which I plan to change. I have been thinking of making a knockoff of a Setchell Carlson "Jet" as I have an RCA chassis, and speaker that would work well for it. What I need though is a wood drum from a child's drum set for the speaker part, I could make something in that shape but it would save a lot of work to use something already the size and shape I need
Regards
Arran