KB FB10 cabinet help

[Phil G4SPZ]

I'm restoring my first FB10 'Toaster' and have a couple of queries regarding the cabinet and dial glass, so perhaps someone can advise please?

First, the dial glass is held in place by four push-on spring fasteners, which engage with lugs cast into the cabinet. One fastener is missing. My past success at removing this cheap and nasty type of fastener has not been good; either the lug gets broken off, or the fastener flies off violently into the darkest recesses of the workshop floor, never to be seen again! These are clearly designed as one-shot devices for the manufacturer's convenience. Does anyone have a reliable method of removal that they could recommend?

Secondly, the Trader service sheet describes the cabinet as "painted Bakelite" but it looks more like cream urea formaldehyde to me. The external surface has become quite rough, and there is a hairline crack visible to the left of the dial. All that's missing are some toast crumbs to complete the image of a well-used toaster! My initial inclination is to sand it all down and spray it with a cream aerosol paint, but I'd appreciate any suggestions from FB10 owners who have managed to restore the original finish.

Thanks for any advice.

Phil

[ukcol]

These clips are horrible to remove (you knew that ).

Refering to the picture below.

I grip the clip as best I can at points A with a pair of long nosed pliers. Then with a suitable size jeweller's flat blade screwdriver a points B I gently lever the clip up the post working each side alternately.

I have a reasonable good success rate but not 100%

[Carl Glover]

Hi Phil,

The FB10 cabinet is white urea formeldehyde, but with quite a bit of filler in it. The red version is red bakelite, and the pale green and pale blue variants are urea as well.

I used to carefully twist the fasteners off to get the dial removed, but it is a hit-and-miss affair I'm afraid!

Carl

[Radio Wrangler]

Plan B for those clips (practiced on the devils on lots of cars):

Thread a bit of steel (piano) wire or old guitar string under the bent ramp (barb) which skewers the poor defenceless bit of plastic, and over the rest of the clip and make into a loop, thread the end under the other barb and make a loop. Join the wires and put a nice big screwdriver shaft through the loops. This is to allow you to use force without cutting yourself with the wire.

The principle is that when you haul on the screwdriver, the wire loops tighten and the wires pull on the barbs, opening them, releasing heir grip on the plastic.

Pulling or prying the whole clip closes the barbs deeper into the plastic and disaster is guaranteed.

David

[David G4EBT]

I've never tried to restore the original finish of a KB10 - they always look a bit sorry for themselves, probably due to exposure to UV over their long life. The often become 'crazed' too.

I have however re-sprayed several and have attached some pics of two I've done. Both had damaged cabinets which I repaired with Plastic Padding. The red one had quite a chunk out of it, so I made an 'armature' to support the filler, drilling 1 mm holes sideways into the cabinet with a Dremel type drill, then poking wire (from a large paper clip) into the holes to bridge them, shaped to the contour of the cabinet before adding the filler and sanding to shape. (Unfortunately I didn't take a pic of the repair).

I sanded the cabinets down to key the primer, then primed them and gave them two coats of gloss. The green one isn't as garish as it appears to be in the pic - it's a sort of 'eau de nil' colour which my son asked for. (The first pic is the one as found, which morphed into the green one!) I've never had much success in removing the dials on KB10s without snapping off the lugs - I just use a glue gun, which is fine.

Never really found a suitable material to dye for the speaker fabric as it's invariably faded.

As to paint colours, the nearest to the original KB colour often goes under the name 'Antique White' rather than the range of cream colours, which often turn out to be too 'yellowy'.

The two radios featured were £15.00 the pair, so I was happy with that and the end result.

As always of course, there was work to do inside the cabinets. The last pic is the 'scalps' I took from the red one.

Hope that's of interest and helps a bit.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Tweek... prise... carefully now... ah yes, here it comes... steady... ping, wheee...

No, I'm only joking! Colin's method worked 100%, first time. I used a sharp bradawl in lieu of a watchmaker's screwdriver, but thanks for the tip Colin. Your little diagram deserves to be made a 'sticky'. And David, the Plan B Piano Wire technique is, I think, very subtle and probably universally applicable to these confounded things. No wonder you got the title "Radio Wrangler"!

It was great to hear from you, Carl - presumably one and the same person as the BVWS's brilliant photographer - and as for David EBT's collection of FB10s in different colours, all I can say is wow! I have had some previous success myself in re-spraying the cream painted Bakelite cabinet of a Marconi Companion portable, so I think I'll use the same technique for this one, sanding down, priming and gloss painting, sticking to the cream colour as closely as I can.

In reading old Forum posts, I gather that the speaker cloth fitted to the cream FB10 was originally green in colour, to match the green on the dial glass, but most by now have faded completely. So I'll be looking for something suitable at the haberdasher's tomorrow. The ultimate fate of this set is as a surprise present for the XYL - a new kitchen radio to tone-in with Mrs G4SPZ's new kitchen, where the colour themes are sage green and cream. A good way of sneaking another vintage set into the house!

Thanks to everyone for your interest and advice, much appreciated. When I get the set working - LO running but no signals - I'll post a Success Story and pics in due course.

Phil

[crackle]

If one of the plastic pegs does snap off when removing the clips, there is a spare one by the side which is just close enough to take the clip and hold the glass in place.
If the original speaker cloth is in good condition you can dye it. I used a green indelible marker and then blended it in with a meths soaked cloth.
Sometimes when you remove the speaker baffle and there is not too much glue spread around, you can turn the baffle up the other way and the darker strips which were hidden under the horizontal bars are now visible so the original colour shows.

The attached photo is of the first one I did where I used a green felt pen and alcohol to blend it in.
Mike

[Phil G4SPZ]

It looks lovely, Mike!

Fortunately, the spring clips all came off without damage, so the pegs are still intact. I've actually been shopping today and bought a piece of suitable curtain material, pretty close in colour to the green on the dial. They wouldn't sell me a six-inch square and I had to buy 1/4 of a square metre at the exhorbitant cost of £2! I also intend to try washing and dyeing the original material, which is in remarkably good condition apart from the colour.

Before re-painting the cabinet, I'm going to try restoring it, starting with grade 00000 wire wool to remove the roughness and the dirt, followed by mildly abrasive polishes, and finally several coats of wax polish. If this proves unworkable, I reserve the right to abandon the attempt and resort to respraying

[crackle]

Hi Phil
It should come up looking nice after a good rub with wet and dry and then no.3 polish and a good waxing.
This is a FB15T I have restored, The original cabinet was smashed to bits in the post. I was given this dirty but whole cabinet and it polished up real good.

I have yet to finish fixing up the original cabinet which was smashed.
Only got so far it needs a bit of filler, strengthening on the inside and finishing off.
Mike

[Phil G4SPZ]

The cabinet in that third pic looks like... toast! Well done on the polishing, Mike. Mine is probably worse than yours was originally, but thanks for the advice and it's worth a try anyway. I have only got Paste Polishing No 5 which I assume is finer than No 3.

It's nice to see how many of these sets have been beautifully restored. I didn't like them at first but they are slowly growing on me.

[crackle]

Hi Phil
I made a mistake, mine is no.5 as well.
Once filled, smoothed and strengthened, the smashed case will have to end up being painted but I have not decided what colour.

Good luck.
Mike

[westcliff]

Hi Phil,

I repaired one of these a couple of years ago. There's a thread here: https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...ad.php?t=70801

Posts 10 and 118 contain before and after pictures. I'm a great believer in fibreglass for adding strength to repairs.

Gus.

[Top Cap]

The FB10's I have restored always had distortion due to the speaker being faulty, I can only guess that the heat gets to the cone and hardens it. I have recently completed a friends FB10 and now looking for a suitable Goodmans 3" speaker for it if anyone has a good one.
Else I may try the card shims and dampened cone trick to see if that helps. The first time I came across this, I spent ages going round the output stage and scoping signals before eventually realising it was the speaker doh! :-(

[crackle]

Hi Les
I have restored 4 various models of this family of KB radio, and not had any problem with the speakers, you must have been very unlucky. But I do accept with the way the speaker is mounted maybe it is possible the frame could get slightly distorted. Maybe twisting or putting an opposite stress on the speaker may help free the speech coil.

Mike

[telstar]

Hi Phil. Those horrid spring clips are a menace in all radios in the 1950's. They were actually given the name "Speed Nuts", as they were supposed to have saved time undoing screws & nuts. Unfortunately, the speed nuts age hardened, and caused damage to the plastic studs.
I just grip them with pliers, then twist them and pull up.
Cheers
Mike

[Phil G4SPZ]

I've been researching a little further into the spring steel push-on fasteners, and they are known by the registered trade mark of Spire® Push-On Fixes, still manufactured by Design Assemblies in Bognor Regis. Their catalogue shows these on page 28, together with all manner of other devious and fiendish spring steel clips, nuts and fasteners, designed specifically to make the manufacturer's life easy and the repairer's life particularly hard.

There is something about the horrid Spire® clip which reminds me of razor wire... as it's easy to install and the devil's own job to remove afterwards. These clips have cropped up on several different threads on the Forum in the past, so they are clearly a contender for the second most hated component... the first being the Hunts capacitor, of course, though I'd say that Hunts are easier to remove than Spire® clips!

As they are a British company, I will drop them a line and ask if they have a recommended removal procedure or tool, fully expecting the answer "no".

[telstar]

Hi Phil. Yes these were actually called Spire(R) clips (not speed nuts as I originally thought, sorry). Most of these (of both name titles) actually seem to look similar to each other ("U" shaped) apart from the ones that we see in these radios (sloping sides with the fastener in the centre).
These are the ones that broke in my Regentone DP3, but previous repairers had suffered the fate of missing/broken cabinet stumps that these clips fit over. I may just use Hot Melt glue in my Regentone to secure the parts that the clip was formerly in place of securing.
Maybe you can use Hot Melt to secure the parts in your KB together? I used it to secure the glass dial to the cabinet of my KB MR10 (although not originally held together by clips, but by tape), and it seemed to hold it securely.
Cheers
Mike

[Phil G4SPZ]

It's not necessary Mike because, as mentioned in post#8, the Spire fasteners came away without damage. Hot melt glue has its uses, but it tends to be permanent and I'd hesitate to use it on the glass dial in the KB for fear of the asymmetrical application of heat cracking the glass.

[boxdoctor]

Very slightly off the original topic, but seeing as the thread is about FB10s, I have one which was given to me that had a black and brown mottled finish. The paint was in poor condition, and I decided to remove it and polish up the original cream finish undernreath.
The painted finish was, I believe, done at the factory, as it included all the inside of the cabinet, and was properly sprayed on.
The odd thing was when it was removed,a small cut-out at the bottom rear left corner of the cabinet, carefully filled with some kind of filler became visible. I wonder if this was a factory done thing perhaps for a mains lead outlet for another of the many variations of this model that were produced, and then after a change of plan, filled in, and to hide it the cabinet was then sprayed over.
Anybody had this on one of theirs? Tony.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Update: the chassis is now refurbished and working well. I've fitted a new speaker cloth, but only just realised that the baffle board has a right way and a wrong way up. I didn't spot this when removing it...

Can someone please advise?