[Arran]

 It's purely speculation regarding what you may have done wrong in restringing the dial cord for this set since we can't see what you did, but on this or any other set with a slide rule dial there is not end of ways to get it wrong.
If the dial only travels about 1/3 of the way before binding that usually means that you don't have enough turns of dial cord wrapped around the drum on the tuning capacitor, if that's so then the dial will stop moving once you hit one of those knotches in the edge of the drum. Another common reason why it may bind is in how the cord was wrapped around the tuning shaft, if you started wrapping around the shaft in the wrong direction with respect to where the cord is coming from, it can snarl itself. It's actually easier for me to show someone then explain in writing how to string a dial cord, I've restrung so many I don't even think about it anymore, I would go by the diagram Philco produced and follow it until it works.
  By the way, if you need a proper 41-280 dial pointer I'm sure someone can come up with one, they literally built 100s or 1000s of things, as well as several table and console models that used that same basic chassis layout.
Regards
Arran