Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

Does anyone have a source for good quality millboard suitable for back panels?

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

Try www.woolies-trim.co.uk
They sell all sorts of vintage car trim materials, including sheets of millboard. It has a lightly embossed leather effect on one side, and a sheet is about 5 feet by 4 feet, so more than big enough for any radio. Cost is around £18 + p+p.

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

You might want to look at Segal's too. There are a number of classic car places that do it, as Terry says. Segal's have some plain if you don't want the embossed effect.

Ratchford's (the book-binding company) also sell grey millboard. I have only bought their leathercloth, but they distinguish between the millboard and 'greyboard' which I think is the solid cardboard used on the backs of pads of paper. Perhaps the millboard is extra solid.

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

Very useful information, thank you.
Cheers
John

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

For midget sets I've used the card out of the covers of ring-binders.

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

Millboard isn't very suitable for radio backs in my experience.

The only presumed advantage is that it looks authentic, but in fact it doesn't.

It's invariably black in colour, whereas most radio backs are brown, and the textured surface of millboard is designed to mimic leatherette. Furthermore, it's made of compressed card, which is layers of paper, and whereas radio backs would originally have been die punched, we have to resort to DIY techniques using tools such as drills, chisels, scrollsaws, routers etc, and it tends to 'fluff up' or delaminate, rather then cut cleanly. It's only 2.2/2.3mm thick and is insubstantial when lots of slots or holes are cut in it.

I experimented with Millboard (AKA 'Trimboard') some years ago using a slot cutting router jig that I designed for making replica radio backs, but the results with Millboard were very poor, so I resorted to using 3mm hardboard and MDF, which produced far better results. Quite a lot of radio backs were not textured - the Wartime Civilian Receiver for example, or the 444 'People's Set'. I've mention my experiences in previous threads on the forum and in a BVWS Bulletin article back in 2013, so I won't bang on about it.

I've attached a couple of examples of backs I made using 3mm Hardboard. One for a Little Maestro, the other for a WCR radio.

I painted them with the nearest shade of matt brown tester pots that I could find to the originals, and made and fitted labels as called for.

These are just my experiences - other may have had satisfactory results using Millboard.

You can get a sheet 48" x 30" for £8.40 or 48" x 62" for £16.80 from here. You'll see what I mean about the texture:

https://www.martrim.co.uk/car-trimmi.../millboard.php

Or from Wollies, 61.75" x 48.5" at this link for £17.50:

https://www.woolies-trim.co.uk/produ...term=Millboard

Hope that helps a bit.

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

Brilliant! J.

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

They look really good David, thank you.
Cheers
John

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

Back in t' good old days British Leyland cars kept me in half decent stuff the boots had slabs of the stuff in I made a very nice set of punches for backs and I recently noticed someone on ebay doing repro backs for Dac90s obviously they're getting it from.somewhere

Re: Millboard suitable for radio backs any ideas where ?
 

The topic of repro backs - especially for the more common radios - crops up periodically on the forum because they either go missing, or on live-chassis sets which use a mains dropper, the top of the back tends to carbonise and crumble away, (EG; DAC90 especially, DAC90A to a lesser extent), then you are faced with either bodging in a piece of material of some sort or another, or making/buying a replica back.

Not only does the back need to have the same slot arrangement, it needs to be a similar colour and as often as not, to look presentable, a label created along the lines of the original. Next to impossible to do that without a router in a purpose designed jig or by using a CNC router.

The only repro ones that I've seen on e-bay aren't made of 'millboard', but 3.2mm MDF, made by forum member 'neil24-7' last on the forum 18 April 2018.

Neil runs a business making such things as slate signs using a CNC router. In 2017 he made a batch of excellent repro DAC90A and Wartime Civilian Receiver backs in plain 3.2mm MDF which he offered on the forum at the very reasonable price of £12.00 each, given that the CNC router needed to be programmed and set up. However, though they were much admired, and some forum members enquired about the possibility of other panels being made, they didn't sell and Neil was left with them on his hands.

I'd concur that 3.2mm MDF is the best material to be use, unless oil tempered hardboard can be found.

On eBay Neil goes by the name of 'Radio Ga Ga'. His ebay listing, which was for the DAC90, has ended. The listing stated:

DAC90 REPRODUCTION REAR PANEL / COVER

Finding a complete unburned DAC90 Panel is impossible to find these days so I have reproduced these hard to find panels to make your restorations look Fantastic and as near as possible to original.

CNC Milled 3.2mm Black Hardboard.

We also stock DAC90A reproduction panels and are trying to add more Radio makes all the time.

Please note this sale is for 1 rear panel only and not the radio

End quote.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DAC90-REP...p2047675.l2557

Neil's forum thread offering DAC90 back panels is here:

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=136961

The link to the thread on his excellent WCR repro back panels, which included a label is here:

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...0A+Back+Panels

Though the backs were keenly priced, DAC90s and '90As are money pits and already cost far more to restore than they're ever going to be worth. (possibly an OPT or rewind, a UL41 output valve, maybe a UY41, a set of caps, possible wave-change switch problems, volume control, maybe a twin smoothing/reservoir cap, pilot bulbs, etc), Maybe a commercially produce replica back for some impecunious restorers is just a step too far?

Certainly none of the sets I've made DIY replica backs for would have been worth spending much money on, which is why I took the DIY approach and made a universal router jig, which I covered in the thread at the link below. Once the jig is made, if a full sized sketch of the back can be found, it's about an hour's job to make a back, but it's noisy, messy and unpleasant, calling for face protection, a respirator and ear defenders.

The fact that Neil is properly equipped and able to make excellent replica backs at such a reasonable price, means that it's questionable - even if one has the skills and equipment - to make one's own backs. I only did it because woodworking and woodturning in my other hobby, and perverse as it may seem, for me, making backs for my own sets wasn't a chore. (I've seen some excellent examples by forum members at the top of their game who've made backs for People's set ('444') and round Ekcos by hand).

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...0A+Back+Panels

Hope that's of interest.