This set had its restoration finished over this Memorial Day weekend. This set was in a worse condition than the Zenith 705, which restoration process is described in the last post of previous week. Take a look at the photos above and below. The radio was in a Lazarus condition. Lots of woodworking on the cabinet that was completely falling apart. It was necessary to make a reproduction of the cabinet floor. The front and lateral veneers were loose, with some of them missing. All cabinet parts needed to be glued back together including new veneers on the missing spots.  The top of the cabinet was completely warped and loose. The the top and the botton layers were then removed and glued back with lots of pressure. The front trim was missing and the lateral ones were cracked, then I decided to make new ones using a router table. Also all 4 knobs were missing and I replaced them with reproductions from Renovated Radios - http://www.renovatedradios.com/parts.html.  

The old cabinet finish was stripped with a citrus base remover, sanded with 220, 320 grid sand papers, and 0000 steel wool, and refinished with 3 different toner colors and about 4 layers of satin lacquer by Mohawk. As I was not satisfied with the refinished cabinet, I did strip it again with lacquer remover, 320 and 400 grid sand papers, and repeated the finishing with the toners and the satin lacquer. I'm still thinking about replacing all veneers since the old cabinet veneers did not accepted a good refinishing. But this is a future project. It will be this way for a while.

The chassis was full of rust spots and the 6D6G tube with its original shield were missing. They were easily replaced once I had both in stock. The speaker had a good 1200Ω field coil and a good output transformer, as well. The chassis was wire brushed to start removing the rust spots followed by a pressured air cleaning. A phosphoric acid based product also was used to remove the heavier and remaining rust. The chassis was then wire brushed again with a finer carbon wire dremel cone brush and pressured air cleaned to get rid of loosen steel bristles. The power transformer then was black enamel painted. Next, all capacitors and many out of specification resistors were replaced. Also, the candohm strip resistor was replaced by power resistors in series. New electrolytic caps were stuffed inside the original electrolytic cans. The set was aligned using a Heathkit RF signal generator and a Tektronix 2225. While in the process of restoration, the dial glass was broken. Thanks to Play Things of the Past - http://www.oldradioparts.com I could get an original replacement for a fair price. Photos of all restoration process are available at the radio page.

Before restoration	After restoration