[Ron Ramirez]

After managing to refinish a whopping total of two cabinets last summer, I want to do better this year.

Reading a thread started by F. Stephen Masek on ARF in which he talks about stripping several cabinets in one day inspired me to try the same thing.

I selected eight candidates. Of those eight, I am going to try a "selective" refinish on one, as it is in very good shape overall but has two major blemishes on top. So, on that one (a Tropic 39-770T), I am going to try scraping the top and then just refinishing that area, leaving the rest alone. If it doesn't work out to my liking, I can always strip the whole thing and try again.

Good old Southern Indiana weather...gotta love it...not. As seems to be the norm rather than the exception, the seasons here change from winter to summer with little if any spring in between. This year was no exception - once winter finally turned loose of its grip on the area, the temperatures rapidly rose to highs in the upper 80s with very high humidity.

It's been raining off and on here ever since I returned home from Kutztown. Today seemed like it would remain sunny, though, so I set up the new folding table I bought just for the purpose of outdoor radio work, and brought out the other seven candidates for this year's refinishing:

610T "Big Bullet". Needs a small amount of veneer repair, plus some veneer and parts of the cabinet are loose and will need to be glued down. To make it more of a challenge, it looks like someone attacked the cabinet with a drill, partially drilling several round indentations into the wood.

37-610T "Big Bullet". Has had some poor veneer repair on front that is going to show, no matter what I do, so I will just have to live with it. It also has some structural defects which will require regluing.

38-2670B tombstone. I bought this cabinet to replace an identical 37-670 cabinet that needs a lot of work, including some tricky veneer repair. The 38-2670 looked like someone had tried to strip it using one of those "green" strippers. One thing you can count on with a lot of those "green" strippers - they don't work. So the cabinet was very grungy, but also very solid, needing no veneer repairs.

Canadian 39-330AT. Has some small pieces of veneer missing on one side, otherwise very solid.

41-KR. This one has been sitting around here for two or three years. It is very dirty, and the cabinet is literally falling apart at the seams, so a fair amount of regluing is in order once it is stripped.

41-246T - A very neat medium-sized table model radio, identical to the 41-245 except for the frequency coverage.

42-22CL - Basically solid, but has several bad scratches at right front. These will probably show once the cabinet is done, even if I fill them in with wood filler.

I began work about mid-morning on the 38-2670, the largest cabinet of the lot. Because of its size and its overall grunginess, it took quite a while to get it stripped and clean.

After lunch, I proceeded with the 610T, the 39-330AT, the 41-246, and started on the 41-KR. The white paint is very, very heavy on the 41-KR. Add to that the sun and high humidity...I quit about halfway through the 41-KR and will tackle it, and the other two, later this week when it isn't raining.

Here's what I have accomplished so far:

[Image: http://www.philcoradio.com/images/phorum...dcbcec.jpg]

Left to right: 41-246T, 39-330AT, 41-KR, 38-2670B with 610T in front of it. Four of those five are stripped and ready for the next step. The 41-KR will require a lot more stripping and cleaning.

Here is a "before" shot of the 37-610T:

[Image: http://www.philcoradio.com/images/phorum...442717.jpg]

and the 42-22CL:

[Image: http://www.philcoradio.com/images/phorum...g~original]

Wish me luck...I shall need it. Now, if things go really well this year, I have at least three more cabinets needing to be refinished. We shall see how things go with these first seven, though. I just hope I can get more than two refinished this year.