1938 Philco Restoration Process
The last blog post on our July Radio of the Month talked about how intricate and beautiful the radio looked on the inside compared to the radio’s gorgeous cabinet. However, the cabinet did not always look as good as it does now. Just as much work goes into restoring the cabinet as it does restoring the insides.
This blog post is a little look at the process from start to finish as we restored this month’s radio of the month.
To the left is the original Philco cabinet. We get most of our units “wearing some history” as we like to call it. You see here that this 1938 Philco Radio is no exception. To restore the radio up to our standards a lot of work has to be done to this cabinet before it is ready to go. This particular model has to be hand-striped, sanded, and then hand-painted.
To the right is what the cabinet looks like after it has been hand-striped and sanded. Our “cabinet restore guy” takes cautious care when striping down the original cabinet. We like all of our cabinets to look period appropriate so we restore them to the original finish and style. This cabinet still had remnants of the original style but still needed a lot of work done before it looked perfect.
To the left is the final stage in restoring the cabinet. It has been stained and finished to look identical to the original cabinet style. Once the cabinet is finished than the restored chassis can be re-installed.
To the right is the finished radio with a new grill cloth, restored knobs and chassis all re-installed to make up this beautiful masterpiece!
To purchase this month’s radio click here to see our Etsy listing. Check out our other listings as well! We have a plethora of vintage radios and phonographs ready for purchase that look just as beautiful as this unit!
