Welcome

Welcome to my online restoration journal. Here I’m going to document the progression of the restorations on which I’m currently working. Like anything the more I get into the se projects, the more resources out there on the internet I find, and it’s always amazing to me the ideas that people come up with to solve problems that they face. I’m hoping that you can take away something from this too. Maybe, like me, you’re looking for ideas on restoring your own antique, or maybe you’re just trying to identify a recent purchase. Whatever your reason for visiting, thanks for coming and enjoy your stay! Feel free to leave comments as well.

Currently I have three different projects in the works, each in a different phase:

1952 Seeburg M100C Jukebox

1940 Philco 40-160F Floor Model Radio

Silvertone 7181 Floor Model Radio

The Seeburg is sort of my life-long project. It’s about 90% complete and I hope to finish it soon. The cabinet has been fully restored and I am ecstatic with the way it came out. There’s an electrical problem with the amplifier that has eluded me for many years. I need to go back to the drawing board on this one. Recently I’ve been buying new tubes for it, so I hope to power it back up soon.

The Philco I acquired at a flea market in Roanoke, AL back in September 2007 for all of $60. It’s in rough shape, not terrible, but not great either. The cabinet will need to be refinished, and a few pieces of wood on the front are split and cracked. It will need a new grill cloth definitely and a re-coning of the speaker. The receiver was covered in a quarter inch of dust and grime, so that will be fun to clean. It will also need all new tubes and capacitors as usual, and the antenna is in really rough shape. Basically it’s a mess. To me, though, it looks beautiful, but I’ll make it look gorgeous when I’m done.

The Silvertone I recently bought at a local antique store here in Manassas, VA. It was a birthday present to me from me and like the Philco, I only paid $64.26 including tax. Not bad at all. I don’t know the model number or the year it was made, I’m still researching that information. All I know is that it’s intact, minus the vacuum tubes (7). It looks as though it was painted by someone many years ago, so that’ll be the first thing to go. I’ll strip the cabinet down to the bare wood, give it a nice light sand job and maybe some Tung Oil and varnish to finish it off. It’ll need all the same things the Philco requires, grill cloth, speaker cone, tubes, caps, antenna, etc. This project will come last on the list as I need more information before starting on the receiver.