Old Radios

This old Philco Radio is the first radio project I ever attempted. I was able to find this radio on Craigslist and it was beat up pretty bad. My initial intention was to try and fix it up like new, but I bit off more than I could chew and reluctantly decided to just put a couple small speakers and a modern T-amp to make it an Ipod speaker.

After my first radio attempt I decided to look for radios that were the case only, so I would not feel bad about throwing out the internals that could still potentially be fixed. So I happened upon this nice little Truetone case on ebay and went for it even though it started out with a thick layer of bright blue paint. After a couple days sanding and scraping I finally got all of the blue off of it and was able to apply some stain, put new radio grille cloth, clean up the really cool glass dial piece, and find some old knobs to finish the look. I popped in another T-amp and set of speakers and was actually able to sell it for a little profit on Craigslist. Not bad, eh?

This Westinghouse radio has been a work in progress for quite a while now, but I have got to the point where all I need to do is find some matching knobs and it will be done. Like the rest I have sanded down the entire case but instead of applying more stain where needed, I just kept the vintage used look it had and sprayed some nice satin lacquer on it to even the shine. I hope to be done with it soon.