tips to restore broken bakelite radios

[hbsoftware]

hi everyone
my name is Hugo an i live in Portugal
sorry for posting in English (i cannot speak or write German)
i am posting here to show you some tecniques i use to repair broken bakelite radios and i hope it is usefull to someone or if you have anymore tips i appreciate it.
the guys on the tube tv section were very helpfull when i was repairing a philips tv so here is my contribute to this forum


so first step remove the chassis , speaker etc

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next i go to a scrap radio and cut a piece of bakelite to match the shape of the missing piece
then i grind a bevel around the patch piece in order to accept a lot of epoxy glue

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mix the epoxy and glue the piece
make sure to leave the patch half milimeter low in order to accept a layer of filler

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to be continued

[hbsoftware]

apply bumper filler (for car bumpers) very hard but flexible (the picture appears on the bottom of the post , dont know why)
if you do not have bumper filler apply regular polyester putty or superfine polyester putty (auto body shop)

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i added a reflective aluminium sheet to take the heat from the mains dropping resistor

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next sand the filler with 120 grit until it is all flat and the correct shape, if you want you can use a sanding block
you cannot feel the transition between the patch and the rest of the radio
if you feel it then you need to sand more or add more filler and sand again (dont worry if you scratch the bakelite)
next sand the whole area to paint with 400grit wet sandpaper by hand till all the scratches are gone (easy)
then paint with automotive paint ( i use acrylic paint 2 components) super hard and unscratchable, never peels of for decades guarateed (about 10€ a quarter of a liter here and the colour you want)
next i polish the area not to paint, then clean it with alcohol to remove the polish compound residue and then i give it all a coat of clear lacquer (automotive)
then restored the electrical part of the radio and enjoy
this is a schaub libelle radio (nothing special but it deserved another live)

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[hbsoftware]

this is a sierra radio
its basically a philips clone
it was given to me for free because it was going to the trash for being so broken

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check out the repaired crack in the top of the radio

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[hbsoftware]

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then i had some extra red paint and decided why not: lets hot rod the radio, it was heading for the trash anyway so....
i still dont know if i like it or not
i still can repaint it brown
looks like a giant traffic light

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[Florian H.]

Hallo Hugo,

Deine Anleitung ist super! Du könntest aber zukünftig deine Beiträge ins Deutsche per Google-Übersetzer übersetzen. Dann verstehen wir dich direkt, ohne selbst übersetzen zu müssen

_____

Hello Hugo,

Your instructions are great! But you could translate your contributions into German in the future via Google translator. Then we understand you directly, without having to translate yourself

[hbsoftware]

hi
i will try google translate in the future
but it doesn't seem to work very well in German so sorry if i say something that doesn't make sense

Hallo
Ich werde Google Translate in der Zukunft versuchen
aber es scheint nicht gut auf Deutsch zu funktionieren. Tut mir so leid, wenn ich etwas sage, das keinen Sinn ergibt

[radio-hobby.de]

Hello Hugo,
thank you for posting your instructions for repairment of Bakelit.

Greetings,
Georg


Hallo Hugo,
vielen Dank für das Posten Deiner Anleitung zum Reparieren von Bakelit.

Viele Grüße
Georg