[Ron Ramirez]

Claude

You can probably postpone your router purchase...Mark Oppat heard I needed a couple grille bars for my 38-116, and he's sending me a couple originals. So thank you anyway for your kind offer to reproduce these, but apparently the missing grille bar problem is already solved.

[49Stude63]

Bummer there goes my excuse for a new router.

[Jerry Huelsbeck]

claude,
I'd buy the router now anyway, then your ready for the next radio that needs a repo grill bar

[Bill Hutchinson]

OK, going back to the original post in this thread, here's the before and after of the Philco 42-122 $5 farm radio.

[Image: http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c170/p...-122ba.jpg]

I've edited in a smaller version - much better!

Bill

[Ron Ramirez]

Bill - nice job! Please tell us how you were able to refinish the cabinet yet save those photofinish stripes on the front.

[Bill Hutchinson]

Since the basic finish was pretty much intact, I took a soft cloth and dipped it in some walnut stain and wiped it over the front and sides. That took out most of the scratches.

As I originally described in the first post, the top was badly weather worn, as you can now tell. At first I stained the top, but it came out way too dark, so I took as much of the color off as I could with lacquer thinner and just finished it that way. You can still see a difference between the top and sides, bit I decided I could live with it that way.

Also, the left side veneer strip was half gone. Since I couldn't find any walnut veneer in a 3/4" wide roll, I used oak veneer and painted it brown. To match it to the rest of the cabinet, I also painted the other side and the bottom. Semi-gloss lacquer went over the whole cabinet to complete it.

The chassis was worse off than the cabinet, but the earlier posts in this thread described that process.

All told, for a $5 investment, and maybe another $10 in parts, not too bad!

Bill

[Frank]

Ron,
What code is your 38-116? I just finished mine, and it was a code 121; the one with the older style RF deck with trimmers on the bottom. If you's is a code 121, could you see what type 'W' speaker it has? I'm still stumped why mine came with an output transformer that has a primary resistance that does not match the schematic while the code 125 transformer does match resistance wise.

Keep us posted on the progress. I think these are very interesting Philco consoles. A lot of them are around, they are a bit of a challenge to restore, but they are very good performers. Overall, they could be the bargain high end Philco for today's collector.

Frank.

[Ron Ramirez]

Frank

I've started a new thread on the 38-116:
http://www.philcoradio.com/phorum/showthread.php?tid=78

I'll answer your post there.

[Doug Houston]

Ah, such memories. Just before Christmas 1936, the Ned's Firestone store delivered a big cardboard box with that big Philco wreath on it. Couldn't touch it until father got home. He unpacked it, and there was a sparkling new Philco 37-650X. It replaced a United Reproducers "Currier"' set of about 1930 vintage. There was already a good antenna on the house and the Philco worked like a bomb on it. It seemed incredible how much reception this new set pulled in (after the old TRF job!). We had the set into the fifties. I maintained it all those years. One of the guys at work wanted it, as it had been replaced by something else, so I gave it to him (dumb, dumb!). But in recent years, I've acquired another one, and the table version of that model as well.

I perceive that the 37-650 was a big seller. It was a good balance between price and performance, so it may have been the bread-and-butter set for Philco that year.