[EdHolland]

Great points all round!

I would never conflate "nobody looks under the chassis" with any excuse for unsuitable or poor quality work. Furthermore, there are surely people who trust repair of a set to another, without any notion for what that entails, or what is required for safety and longevity. They deserve exactly the same confidence in the safety and function of a repair/restoration as in buying a new appliance (perhaps with an understanding of the different care and feeding required of valve/tube equipment). Quite a different consideration than if we do restorations for ourselves. Or is it... hopefully this stuff outlives us?

That (maybe) takes care of one aspect; The way work is executed, and the standard to which it is held, but does not necessarily consider originality, sympathetic consideration, or aesthetic values. Those aspects involve yet another layer. I see this given serious consideration in work shared here on this forum, as well as safety and function. It is a real challenge to attempt to resurrect this old technology to function and simultaneously preserve it as a record of its age. While I consider myself capable of making a safe, reliable radio, other aspects of restoration are more subjective. What could make sense is that any parts removed could be recorded and saved, so that a future owner and restorer might have a better idea about the original construction. We are lucky - often what we see is largely the output from the factory. What next, for future radio preservers?