RESTORING A 1920'S BATTERY RADIO

[Music] all right here we have a little battery set that I picked up I didn't pay much for about $25 I think it's just a generic battery set it says it's made by Chelsea super done five Chelsea radio company whoever that is it's some obscure radio company from back in the 20s okay it's a five tube and you can see it doesn't have much in the way of coils or anything it's pretty much a generic type of radio okay we're gonna try to get this thing working all right it's a mess it's it's been sitting in the attic for Oh 15 years so we'll go ahead and do a little wiping down and hook up a power supply to it put some tubes in it and see if it work okay [Music] okay I've got a batch up test it Oh one ace here and just okay let me look at the sockets first okay the sockets are corroded as all get-out so what we're going to do we're going to reach down in there with a knife and we're going to scrape the bottoms of the sockets because we want them to be nice and shiny and contact this thing's called a red Oh zip bit and I'm using it not because it's a red a zip but just because it's long and I can stick it down in there we're just going to touch the surface of the bit to the to the contact and just polish it up just make it toward has its metal shaped and the metal colors instead of oh don't [Music] [Music] okay that shines them up a little bit and just have little scratch marks all over them so that makes them Tory they'll contact really good all right now we'll stick tubes in [Music] these particular sockets you push down and you twist it just a little bit clockwise to lock it in it has a little pin on the side and there's a little groove on the side of the socket just line that pin it up and you push it down and then turn it to the right just a little bit and it catches in the socket all right now that fills us up with tubes now I'm just gonna wipe the front of this off a little bit I'm not going to clean it good once we get it playing then what we'll take it apart and we'll clean that panel up and make it look beautiful and the knobs that make them look beautiful that sort of thing but right now I'm just gonna just gonna clean off the dust a little bit here where it's a little bit easier to fool with your stats turned good these alternate sometimes these things are frozen up and you got to work them loose and that might can be a real job this one here we're lucky yeah everything is loose and ready to go this is the on/off switch we may have to get in there and grind that because to get contact on it but we'll find out when we connect power now to connect power okay that's done in the back okay we've got these are nicely labeled we have B plus B plus 45 B minus a plus and a minus so it's real straightforward I don't know what these two down here for they don't have any labeling on them and these two over here are going to be the antenna and ground oh yeah they're late they're labeled I don't know what these two or four but the first thing we'll do is we'll try connecting power to these up here and see if it works we may have something to do here but I don't know I'm just going to set this here and right in the front here we have one says phones and one says speaker all right we got a speaker here we'll go ahead and use it all right now this is her power supply there's a home-built power supply has everything on it it's a professional power supply that I built myself since I do this professionally supposedly and it has some digital readouts let's see if it plugs in I don't know there we go and we have [Music] we have our 22 volt power supply 45 volt 67 and 90 volts and the 90 volt one is adjustable we can go from you know anything to anything we'd go from about 12 volts up to 90 it's just for for the final stage the others are regulated and they will be used for the intermediate stages and each one has a separate output and a current meter to read the current and then we've got our filament supply which is adjustable from zero to their one point two actually to five volts okay and we'll set that to five volts which is what we use for o1a tubes then our C supply probably we won't need it it's a variable from zero to 28 volts and negative now another thing the power supply has got built-in switches so that I can connect the Commons of the power supplies into various different combinations that are used in these radios sometimes a - is hooked - beep - sometimes a + is you just have a switch here that you can go ahead and select that so where you don't have to sit there full with jumpers and things to connect them all up that's just a nice little power supply to make things easier okay let's see we got some wires here hoping to use gray for the + and black - that's for a and we go over here a - goes to there and I don't have the radio turn it on right now so we shouldn't read the current we don't okay if I pull the switch we should see current there we go okay we're reading point eight amps for our tubes which is about right for five of the oh one ace all right next we're gonna hook up our main B+ okay that's going to go to our high voltage one okay I'm going to connect it now I'm gonna hook the common on to a - that's where they show it and I'm gonna hook this high voltage here we have 85 volts so I'm gonna hook it to B plus all right we're reading 27 there are 2.7 million okay then we're going to connect to our let's see we have B - okay that's already hooked up okay now the next one we need is plus 45 okay we go into here 45 and we hook it on to here okay we'll get two milliamps there 2.9 there that's a little low I would say it's a little low now there be - it's already connected up we don't have to worry about it so we're just going to go ahead and we'll try it like this okay next we have to plug in our speaker and see if we get anything okay well okay antenna let me get an antenna okay antenna goes right here and ground is through the power supply so we don't have to worry about that now for now we're gonna use the indoor antenna I have just an indoor antenna know if you can see it yeah it shows up a little you see it right here it's just going from curtain rod to curtain rod it's just about eyewitness to make ten feet long total and we'll just use the indoor antenna to try it I've got nice outdoor antenna - if it doesn't work okay the next thing to do is to plug the speaker in okay we've got speaker jacks here [Applause] some noise [Applause] all right now I'm going to set them to about 40 and see what happens [Applause] nothing coming through so we're gonna have to go ahead pull it out and see what we've got alright we'll get it out of the box and see what we've got to do to make this thing work pulling it out of the box I [Music] don't know if they made this thing serviceable or not all right all right I'll forgive them I'll forgive them for now oh we get there they are nails with threads on the end of them and what they did was they shove them through and put the nut from the bottom okay though I don't buy that that's not too bad it's a little bit it's a little bit too unconventional okay now this okay this here okay they're calling that see - okay that's what this other wires down below is four C's - okay we are not going to use C - in here so we're gonna cut it out those few extra ones are gone see - is not necessary in these radios okay we'll cut that one out of there okay now we're in a little bit better condition we still got everything hooked to this dumb box but at least we can get to the bottom all right let's back oK you've got the panel and there's the underside of the radio okay you can see here okay here's our RF coils and these are the two adios okay the first thing we're going to do is we're going to measure the the audios and make sure that they're good they probably are because we were getting some noise out of them but the first thing we're going to do is we're going to measure all the Transformers if one of them is burned down then it's useless okay okay we're on 1k scale at our little meter here old-fashioned triplet and we will go and just start measuring oh boy you get out of here okay we got it okay that transformers okay one of them goes to the plate the other goes to there all right the next one I'm going to go here and I'm going to look okay and it goes to that so that one's okay all right the Transformers are okay they're okay what we're going to do is we're going to hook the c- which are the the bottoms of the grid windings where it hooked that to to ground instead of to that terminal on the back there we don't need that terminal on the back that is that that's overkill for a radio like this alright so we're going to unsolder that nice nice little job okay well we're just going to take those two and we're going to solder it over there and that's going to take care of that see this is probably why we were getting that oscillation is we didn't have c- connected so that left the grids open all right go from there there I'm going to use a soldering gun for this kind of connection say they're heavy connections you need a lot of heat so you can get them get them heated up there if they don't get hot enough you can't break through the oxide and they don't solder that with this gun you can get up to 900 degrees that'll break the oxide on any of these wires too I am too we have detector to okay now that gives us the two audio tubes and the detector to [Music] all right we've got the we've got the three audio tubes in it and we've got the grid connected to ground okay I've got the signal generator set to about 800 Hertz and I'm gonna hook it to the detector stage so we've got audio signal all the way through from the detector to the speaker okay the next we're going to do is we're going to try going to the input of the detector and see if we can get a signal there now to do that I have to go ahead and set the signal generator to a modulated RF signal I'm going to set it to about one megahertz and modulated at 800 Hertz okay I'm not getting anything that's getting anything at all there that should be mucho better than that so it indicates that the tube is not rectified this should leave a heck of a lot louder than that we got tremendous signal you see if this grid leaked the resistor is any good it reads 1 megohm that's good enough interesting okay will my chair is occupied what you do you're just gonna sit there and take my chair you didn't baby okay so what we're gonna have to do connect up a scope to it and see what's going on here because this is not working all right since this is so rinky-dink here Cline making and we'll make some little brackets and they're gonna fit on here and we're going to fasten the panel on to the back to where we can get this all wired properly and work on it there if it's just to rinky bag having this loose like this it's just not fun to work on so I'm just gonna make these up and bolt them on there and that's going to make it a much nicer assembly okay this okay see how nice that is that holds it then they'll slide into the radio cabinet and it'll be done okay the next thing to do is to clean the wiring up on this thing look at look at this mess it is okay see they had to have it a mess like that before because because they had to be able to flex it around but see like that one there it should be read right over [Music] okay I see real trouble here if we look very carefully at these plates they're touching okay here when we get to right here there's a couple of them down in there that are touching ok this bottom one here okay this one looks okay but these two when we get to a certain point then the plates start touching this comes from the what happens is this pop metal that they cast it with it expands and torques and makes a mess and the result is that you end up with the plates touching so these are going to have to be bent this way okay I'm going to take each of these plates and I'll bend it out just a little bit just a little bit yeah I'm just just just enough okay it's it's better that it's still touch it it's better but it's still touching okay I got a bend here I'm watching the meter over here see when it contact it okay if I rotate it it shouldn't change okay that's good and solid down okay and then this one down here go to the second one [Music] that's it's pretty solid okay and then we go to the okay we finally we've got all the capacitors to we're tuning condenser stored they're not touching okay we got all the power hooked up yeah and everything and got our antenna hooked on to it now let's see we just have to tune producing dust the air president Trump ties to Russia the jury in the Frog trial of [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's assume you get that much from a meeting with just the shield piece of wire all right even with just that we can hear the signal amazing okay that gets it home working all right [Music] [Music] okay there's no 3d in place what I'm gonna do and we'll pry that out I'll put some glue in there and we'll click the heck out of it all right all right we just left that hardened for an hour or two and that'll be good okay that's been sitting here for four hours he is ready to undo looks good all right now we're going to go ahead and color it stain it okay here I have dark walnut stain this is Minwax it's kind of a cheap stain but it works pretty good I'm just going to take a it's a swab of felt and I'm just gonna go ahead and wipe that oh that looks good it looks really good we just taken saturate the wood with it we have to let that dry completely completely dry okay that looks really really good okay that's gonna do the trick okay all right go spray it with cold black [Music] well as a break mood I forgot the mascot the terminals in the back all right we'll do that [Music] can we let that dry then we'll put second coat now the next thing we have to do is clean this panel it's dirty from year after year after year of being in the Attic okay now to get these off of here okay we've got it set screws pressed onto the shafts no problem well I'm gonna go ahead and clean this front panel and to do that we're gonna use some acetone okay I'll get some acetone alright a little bit of acetone here right and we're just gonna wipe this down this will take all the grease of dirt and stuff off of it and leave the panel ready to shine down a lot of it that a lot of dirt on mostly dusty it wasn't very dirty some of them are just absolutely disgustingly dirty but this one was mostly just dusty see a little bit of dirt there okay been trying to go ahead and intensify these markings but I have here is some cream-colored paint plain old acrylic paint let's see if it works I don't know if it will you know they the engraving is not very deep looks like it's alright now we have a fiber brush this is the soft fiber brush the dremel tool we're going to use that just to clean the engraving and the mirror line off of the knob you just take that [Applause] we take it and put it into drill just have a piece of shaft in the drill and we just take a piece of steel wall [Music] okay just cleans it totally off of there so that gives us a perfectly clean Bob okay we'll do that to the other two and we'll be really good all right what I'm doing this I've sprayed the front of the panel with clear lacquer that just takes and it intensifies the color sometimes there be just little shades showing up of the more worn parts from the fresher parts and when you spray it with that lacquer it seals all that off and gives it a nice beautiful glazed look just plain clear lacquer the all the hard hardware was a masked off so we don't get lacquer in the places that it should be okay now okay you set these down exactly straight and then okay now that finishes the radio itself okay now we have to put it in the box okay yeah the first thing that we got to do is connect up these wires that connect up everything okay get these wires hooked up and then we can slide her in there that's gonna do it [Music] a little bit about maybe 3/8 of an inch up so I'm going to bend that down right it's right in there okay you get screws that go in the side here to hole at the top and then we have screws in the back to hold that okay so what I have to do okay those are number six and they're about [Music] just that it's just choice okay okay then it's so perfect it's just unbelievable all right now we've got that the base board has to be held down now that's going to take a long screw about four inches long let me see what I've got okay this is if we got it finished it looks absolutely beautiful I mean just oh my goodness the box looks good radio looks good excellent okay we've got the power supply hip to it speaker antenna [Music] [Applause] sometimes being speaker in the other way [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] kind of paper here with the settings for different frequencies I'm just trying to pick up different stations see 1090 we've got one okay that'll be 27 22 22 14 sister [Laughter] [Applause] that's it all works excellent all right well that's restoring a an old twenties battery set total time for this restoration took let's see it was a day for the radio the day for the cabinet and then another day to get all worried about three days about three days working five or six hours a day

Channel: glasslinger

Views: 53,372

Keywords: radio restoration, radio repair, antique radio, radio

Id: lexVwc0FrsU

Length: 46min 9sec (2769 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 22 2018