[PaulR]

Over the years I have bought two 135s but, unfortunately, only one set of legs!

I restored them both electrically but the mains transformer on one of them burnt out after some use. They have both been relegated to the loft as there isn't really space for them downstairs, but I looked at them again when I was having a clear out. Although the same model with identical chassis the cases are somewhat different as the following photos show. The earlier one has square back edges, a removable inner top, veneering around the edges of the speaker cutouts and a ply back cover. The later one has cut away back edges, the main case made as one piece, brown paint around the speaker cutouts, veneering around the edge of the lid and a cardboard back cover.

They both had opaque brown varnish in not very good condition over the nicely veneered case so I decided to re-finish the case of one of them. As the earlier one had the removable inner top I thought that would be the easier one to do. The veneer on this was also in slightly better condition.

I stripped the lacquer using a painless paint stripper (compared with Nitromors of which a have quite a lot). This brought it off well but needed to be cleaned using water instead of the white spirit I use with nitromors. This meant I could not use wire wool. I used a stainless steel pan scrubber instead which was a little coarse. Having gently smoothed the lovely figured walnut veneer I used American Walnut stain followed by several coats of Danish oil. French polish would have given a better finish but I just don't have the skill to apply this adequately. I polished the finish using Brasso followed by wax polish and I think that the result is acceptable given my level of competence.

The chassis of the set I re-finished is the one with the burnt out transformer and I am trying to justify the cost of having it rewound, but as I already have a good transformer I am finding this difficult. I want to keep the serial numbers correct to the case in view of the difference in case design so if I don't get a new transformer I will probably swap the the one from the newer chassis so the correct one works. It would be a shame, though, if the other one got scrapped just because of a duff transformer. Something to think about!

Anyway, the point of the thread was more about the differences in two radios which had a fairly short production run until the 137 came out. I don't know whether the 135 and 137 were produced concurrently for a while as the story of the one we had when I was a child was that it was bought for my grandfather when he retired in 1938. It may have been that it was old stack in the shop it came from but I do remember my mother saying that, as a teenager, she really wanted the radiogram version which was in the same shop at the time.