This General Television tabletop is ivory painted wood with bakelite handle, trim, and knobs. The case needs to be stripped because it shouldn't be painted, but that will be a pretty easy job. There appear to be a few dings in the wood case that might present a challenge. I'm not really sure if these knobs are accurate, as the Model 49 in Stein's book has brown knobs.

This radio worked when bought, but it does have some hum which indicates that the filter capacitors are going. This will be an easy fix once the case is done.

Cabinet Restoration

It used to be yellow?!

I began the restoration of this radio by stripping it. I started with Citri-Strip, which I like to use on paint. As you can see from the photo on the right, this radio was yellow once! I'm pretty sure that this radio was not originally painted, however, so it will be restored to its original wood finish. After getting the majority of the paint off using the Citri-Strip and a putty knife, I moved to steel wool and Parks Refinisher.

After Stripping

The Parks Refinisher cleaned the case even more, removing the final traces of paint and also cleaned off any Citri-Strip that was leftover. The photo on the left shows the case after removing all the paint. There are a few touches of yellow paint in some nicks and crannies that didn't come out with steel wool, so I will need to lightly sand the case to get that off. There are two damaged areas of the case that appear to have been fixed in the past using wood putty of some sort. The damage is on the trim area, which I can't really fix. I'll probably just leave it the way it is.

All done...

Once the last touches of the yellow paint were removed, I finished off the radio case with several coats of clear lacquer. The next step was to clean up the trim. I put a little Citri-Strip on the trim pieces to clean off the white paint. Too late, I realized that the Citri-Strip was dissolving the plastic trim! I quickly cleaned it off and much to my dismay, the trim had some pitting in it. I had violated the radio restorer's basic tenet - don't make the radio any worse. Luckily, the damage was not severe and I was able to sand down the pieces enough to clean up any damage. I then coated them with dark brown toning lacquer. The final step was to re-intall the original grille cloth, attach the trim, and install the chassis! I replaced the white knobs with brown ones, and I think the radio looks much better that way. The finished radio is shown on the right.

Electronic Restoration

The radio does work fine, but with just a touch of a hum. I'll have to go in and replace the filter capacitors at some point, but they're fine for now.