[Jamie]

Arran, sorry for taking so long to respond, but I needed to look up the terminology so I could give you a decent response and explain what we did.. . Your suggestion is exactly what my friend suggested and actually tried to do. He was only able to convert one side to a rabbet joint. On the other side, it was not possible.

To explain further.... Whats left of the cabinet is surprisingly strong, considering that the original top was violently ripped out. The sides are soldily attached to the bottom. I don't think if would be possible to remove them without damage.

The problem was the top edges of the sides and front -

On one side, and in the front, the tongue is still glued into the groove, but broken off cleanly from the original top. Any attempt to chisel the top edge off was going to result in a split down the entire side. So it was decided to sand it smooth and leave it be.

On the other side, someone had done a very rough job at attempting to chisel out the tongue. They started in the center and worked out about 3 inches in each direction. The edge was uneven and looked like a screwdriver had been used as a chisel. As a result, about six inches of the top of the groove was missing (see bottom photo on first page).

My friend used a sharp chisel to remove the rest of the top edge of the groove and smoothed out the previous work. This resulted in us having to add 1/4" to the width of the new top... and move the slots off center accordingly. But, the good news is that the new top can be square, there is no "notch" on the corner (again, as seen in bottom photo).

So, one side will be sort of a rabbet joint, and the other side will be glued, edge to side, then braced from beneath with triangle stock. (Actually, I plan to reinforce the entire top piece from underneath using triangle stock.) The only downside to this is that the seam will be 1/4" closer to the edge of the radio on one side. I'm not happy about that, and I plan to try to hide it as much as possible during the finishing stage. There is nothing that can be done though... short of making new sides.

I don't know what happened to this radio. Someone broke the original top out of it. The chassis is fine and shows no signs of any violence or abuse, which doesn't add up. These radios were well made, and to break the tongue off of the top piece, all the way around, required a lot of force. I can only imagine that someone smashed it with a baseball bat, or stood on it. The attempted repair job was quite crude, and it brings to mind a fourteen-year-old boy trying to hurry and fix his Dad's radio before he gets home from work..

...anyways, I am working on it today and I'll post some progress later..