[PhilcoMike]

 That set must have left the factory with those extra holes in the side, it's highly unlikely that some owner would have gone to the trouble of measuring out and drilling such a neatly spaced set of holes that happen to line up with the alignment screws in that side of the chassis.

Exactly what I was thinking. I'm leaning towards just leaving it as is for that reason. This set is clearly a pre-production prototype...with the sample electrolytics and trimmer condenser bank...and the speaker that is larger than a factory production speaker would have been. I'm thinking that I will try to find a decent 1942 escutcheon (yeah, I know, "Tenite" and "decent" are mutually exclusive), have a repro dial scale made, clean the cabinet up a bit and let it go at that. I would leave this wood escutcheon on there, but it really looks crude. Philco already had Tenite escutcheons of this size from production 1941 radios as well as a few of the soon to come (at the time) 1942 models, so I don't think the crude red oak escutcheon was applied at the factory.

That would be my guess as well.  Most likely only the factory using a drill jig could do holes that neatly spaced.  They even chamfered the edges.  My question Ron is how do prototypes get out into the hands of the general public?  Sure couldn't see that happening these days.

Nice work!

Mike