This Westinghouse radio was an e-Bay purchase. I put in a low bid (I think it was $12), and I got the radio for that price. I knew there would be a lot of work involved, because obviously the radio had been painted! The description did say that the radio worked, but it also said that it was an Emerson.

When I received it, the bottom of the case had separated from the sides and there was some damage to the veneer strip on the bottom. It was pretty apparent that the radio had been dropped in shipping. I went ahead and tried it, and to my delight it worked fine! It was at this point that I realized the radio was a Westinghouse, and was able to find two pictures in Stein's Machine Age to Jet Age series to work from in the restoration.

Cabinet Restoration

The first step in restoring this radio was to fix the cabinet damage. I carefully glued the cabinet back together, repairing the damage incurred in shipping (darn UPS goons!). Once the damage was fixed, the next step was to strip the radio. The radio had been painted white, with gold trim. It actually looked pretty good, but I wanted the radio to be as authentic as possible. I used Citri-Strip to take the majority of the paint off, and then also used Parks refinisher to clean up the wood even more.

Stripped and veneer removed

Once the radio was stripped, I got a better look at the wood. It was mostly walnut veneer, but there are two strips of mahogany veneer as well - one at the top edge of the cabinet, and one at the bottom edge where the pushbuttons go through. The bottom strip was cracked and damaged in one area. I removed the entire mahongany strip, in order to repair it. The photo the right shows the stripped radio, with the mahogany area removed.

The mahogany strip was replaced with a piece of mahogany veneer purchased in a roll from the local Menard's. Luckily, the width was identical so no trimming was needed. However, at this point, I did have to re-cut the bottom halves of the pushbutton holes. I cut the veneer with an x-acto knife, then sanded to get a smooth hole.

Stains..

One other area of the cabinet needed attention. The top had several dark, black stains on the wood. I imagine this is why the radio was painted in the first place. A picture of the stained top is on the left. A little light sanding revealed that the stains weren't going to come out, so I decided to re-veneer the top as well. A correctly sized piece of walnut veneer was procured and attached, then trimmed and sanded to fit perfectly.

All done!

With the cabinet largely fixed, the next step was to paint the trim. The Stein book showed that the grille bars should be black, so those were removed for painting. The book also shows black areas in the middle of the case which I saw no evidence of during the case work, so I declined to spray any black lacquer in those areas. I did tape off and spray the trim around the top and bottom of the case, as well as the openings where the dial and speaker are with gloss black lacquer. The grille bars were also done in gloss black lacquer. The rest of the case was stained and sealed with a coat of clear lacquer. Finally, I put the whole thing back together. The finished radio is shown on the right.

Electronic Restoration

The radio did work as found, so no electronic restoration was needed.