This was the first
of the Philco sloped front 'no stoop, no squint' radios that I
restored. The output transformer was bad among several other
things. It was another costly restoration. It sounds good and looks
nice on the sideboard in the dining room. Note that the dial cover is
flat and the escutcheon is painted. The escutcheon is a Newbies
mistake. The escutcheon had some corroded areas and I tried to remove
them. It got worse and worse. I finally just painted it. The best
method to preserve these brass-plated escutcheons, I have found, is
to polish LIGHTLY to remove the worst flaws and then spray with a
couple of coats of clear satin lacquer. They were never a highly
polished feature of the radios.
The dial cover is made from a
flat piece of clear plastic from the craft store and cut to fit the
groove around the inside of the escutcheon. Just my opinion, but I
think it looks better than a bulging dial cover that optically
distorts the dial scale. I have made
dial covers by heating a flat
plastic sheet and pressing it over a mold made to the size of the
opening. Bill
Turner makes dial covers for sale.
Here is what it looked like before restiration.
