Back in the workshop

It's been a while, but now the long dark January nights are with us again I have found time to sort out some vintage radio projects that have built up during the summer.

I've got a couple under way, but the one I have spent time on this weekend is a Bush VHF80c from the early 60's. I don't know its exact age yet, but this model first went on sale in February 1960.

I restored a couple of VHF81s a few months ago, which have the same chassis as this but in a wooden case. I have taken a liking to these sets which are easy to restore and perform rather well, so when I saw this one in a junk shop during the Christmas holiday I had a little haggle with the seller. She wanted £22 initially, but we agreed on a very reasonable £15.

Electronic restoration was fairly straightforward, with three wax paper and three Hunts capacitors to replace. I always replace these on sight as they are almost always leaky. The other job was to reform the reservoir and smoothing capacitors, three capacitors in all in a single metal can. This is a time consuming task as there are a lot of wires to unsolder.

On firing up the set via a lamp limiter I could hear stations on all three bands, so I carried on with restoration of the chassis, replacing the broken tuning cord and the lamp holders. The latter are made of rubber, which hardens with heat and age and goes out of shape. A couple of cheap modern plastic holders and two 6V 0.1A lamps sorted the problem.

This is is an AC/DC set (no transformer) so the mains neutral wire is connnected to the chassis. For safety during testing I always use an isolating transformer to prevent the possibility of the chassis becoming live.

The cabinet was in good condition (apart from being filthy) although the white paint had rubbed away in places over the years, particularly around the knobs.

After stripping down the cabinet I used a fine abrasive paper to smooth the painted areas, before protecting the unpainted Bakelite areas with newspaper and masking tape. I then spray painted all the white areas with a quick drying enamel.

I applied four light coats of paint, leaving each to dry for around 10 minutes between each coat. I now need to leave it to harden for a couple of days before removing the masking and tidying up any rough edges between painted and unpainted areas.

I'll post more later.

Keep listening!