Joseph;
It looks like wood dye and Mohawk tone spray are going to be your friends with this one. I'm beginning to think that those spots were caused by battery acid, or some sort of chemical with metal oxide in it. Too bad that you couldn't harvest the bullnose molding from above the speaker grill on your junk cabinet, but you could probably make one if you wanted to. I have to do something similar with the shoulders on a Packard Bell 771 cabinet I have in the basement somewhere, both shoulders were badly cracked, on the diagonal. I'm not even sure what species of wood they used, it looks somewhat like mahogany but with a much lighter grain, the finish on it was very close to your Philco, like a medium dark, to dark walnut. Unlike your Philco I don't have a junk cabinet to harvest pieces from, I will have to make them, and past experience tells me that it will not be easy to get newly made pieces to fit the joints on an old cabinet.
Regards
Arran
(This post was last modified: 12-07-2025, 08:39 PM by Arran.)
I’m familiar with the toner (and I picked some out today), but explain a bit more about the dye. Do you mean like regular stain, or is dye different? If it’s different, can it be used to lighten dark spots?
Joseph;
The dye I'm speaking of penetrates the wood, it will take blond wood and make it any colour you like, I think it's aniline based like Rit fabric dye, and you can mix it with either alcohol or lacquer thinner the latter if you want to colour lacquer. I have some that my late uncle got from Lee Valley, but I'm sure you can get it elsewhere. I also have a bottle of Mohawk penetrating stain that I picked up from the bottle depot, but I haven't tried it on anything yet, but understand it's similar to the crystals you have to mix up.
I have used fabric dye to darken wood so I didn't have to use as much tone spray over it, but that was mixed into hot water, and I applied it hot onto the wood. None of these will get rid of the dark spots, though it may make them more brown rather then that barnboard grey, but they will obscure them enough that they are not as noticeable since the background colour will be closer to the spots. One advantage you have is that you have the cabinet shoulder you removed to experiment on as a test strip, so you can see what hides the spots best.
Regards
Arran
Thanks for the information! I may need to shelf this project for a week or so. Unfortunately, last night one of my dogs slipped a disk in her spine. She’s getting older and has taken an injection for chronic joint pain in the legs, but I guess said injection blocks pain receptors in the back and some dogs end up with issues like this. Luckily the vet feels good about her odds of recovery, but I had better set aside the radio for a bit to get her well!
Luckily my dog is resting and recovering. The situation was very delicate at first, but she’s doing much better now! I took her to a follow-up vet appointment, and they are satisfied that the disk is starting to slip back into place. We’ve got to keep her resting for a few weeks, but she’s already walking normally within the room we’re keeping her in and when I carry her out to the yard. The vets are not worried about any permanent neurological damage, but my goodness were things strange there for a while!
That said, I had been working on furnishing a replacement groove for the broken portion under the right-hand shoulder just as my dog got injured.
I glued it into place one night when I had just a few minutes, and clamped it tightly. Here it is, repaired.
It took a lot of test fitting without any glue to get the new shoulder to line up properly with the rest of the radio, but at last I got it. I fiddled with it for about an hour this evening, and then finally added the glue to all of the joints and screwed it down. I’ve got some clamps and ratcheting straps holding the cabinet tightly together while the glue sets. I’ll be able to show the end result tomorrow once it’s set and I can unclamp it all.
And here we are, with the new shoulder installed. It’s looking better already! Now I’ve just got to get down to work on blending the color of the new veneer to the old wood.
I had a whale of a time blending the color of the new veneer with the older wood, but I think I am finally satisfied. I started doing my research after Arran mentioned the wood dye. We have a store here in Tulsa called Wood Craft, and I discovered that they sell dyes. I got two colors, an auburn (for some orange) and a deep maple (to add some yellow). I bought the kind of dye in a concentrated dropper bottle much like a food coloring squeeze bottle, to be diluted with water or denatured alcohol. I mixed a bit of each into water and treated the new veneer. At this point the wood was much too yellow orange, but it all started coming together when I then used the regular wood stain on top. I used a bit of cherry stain, cut with mineral spirits and then a bit of walnut gel stain. The new and old wood was getting very close, but still the new lacked a bit of red. I was able to blend it all together with some cherry toner. Here’s the final result.
It’s definitely a darker tone than this radio came to me, but I’m thinking it was faded. The junker radio I got over west of Tulsa in Sand Springs had a much richer tone. I sought to match that, and I think I did okay! Here’s a photo comparing against one of the undamaged side panels on the junker.
Hello jrblasde,
Wow the cabinet and finish really looks nice and I also learned to use Dye it's made by Jeff jewitt and Sold under the name Homestead finishing products .
Here is the website !!
Color and finishing are definitely not my forte, and I feel like the crazy artist who is never satisfied with his work. But I do feel pretty good about the end result. It’s got a bit of remaining damage from whatever splattered on it in the past and damaged the wood, but the worst of it is gone. If anything it adds character to tell a story, but it still looks nice and I wouldn’t mind showing it in my living room. I don’t believe I ever attached a photo of the radio as I received it, so here we are.
Thank you very much! Next will be the control panel, and finally the speaker fabric. I had looked through Michael Katz’s selection of fabrics, but didn’t see a close substitute. I emailed him to ask which style(s) he may personally recommend, and his suggestion was the #31.
However, he did comment that he expects to have more styles in stock early next year, and thought that perhaps some would be a better option. He advised I check back with him in February.
I had not! I’m familiar with Radio Daze, but I suppose I glossed over the fact that they carry speaker grille cloth. Their style #14 may also be a viable option.
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