Since it's nice outside today, rather than hole-up in the basement, I dragged the chairside cabinet out to the deck to start on the cabinet repairs. The cabinet overall is in fair condition; structurally sound but with some minor damage. The greatest damage is to the front of the speaker grille, where, somewhere in it's life, this radio got whacked hard enough to crack the horizontal bars and chip-out a chunk of veneer. To start, I'll repair the structural damage by injecting glue into the cracks.
I inject the glue into the crack until it oozes out from everywhere along the crack where it can ooze. Then, I'll pull it back into shape by clamping the damage between two flat planks of scrap wood. This will force more glue out of the cracks, but I'm not going to worry about that now...
I try to get as many clamps around the damage as will fit. Since I don't have many with jaws narrow enough to fit through the grille slats, I augmented my bar-clamps with a carriage bolt/nut threaded through the slats and clamping blocks. Everything is synched-up tight and will be allowed to dry overnight. With any luck, by this time tomorrow, I'll have s straight grille panel needing only a small repair to replace the missing chunk of veneer.
While waiting for the glue to dry, I put the finishing touches on a Detrola 101 that I've been refurbishing at the same time as the Zenith. This one also had minor veneer damage but without missing pieces, so it went through a similar repair: using a razor, I enlarged a pore in the veneer above the blister, injected it with glue and clamped between flat blocks. After sealing/grain filling and spraying with toned lacquer, the repair is completely invisible.
Before: Presentable, but tired.
After. Came out nice, no?
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