GEC BC5244 Refurbished

[davidgem1406]

I have a GEC BC5244 that after some time I have just completed the refurbishment.

The original condition was pretty poor with the cabinet being faded and dirty, the gold front was dull, and one knob was damaged, all 3 were in poor condition (Picture 1).
The tuning scale was a mess being completely crazed on the Right Hand side and unreadable.

On inspection of the interior the chassis was found to be very dirty and badly rusted, as was the tuning scale reflector, transformer core clamps and 1 valve screen can (Picture 2).
When striped down the speaker was found to have a badly deteriorating cone.

All in all quite a lot of work needed to be done.

More pictures of the original condition can be found here:

http://s933.photobucket.com/albums/a...5244/Original/

The first thing to do was to deal with the chassis rust so it was completely striped down whilst making drawings for the chassis wiring (pdf document) and the dial drive cord (pdf document), along with any necessary notes.

The chassis and tuning scale reflector were de-rusted using rotary abrasive disks and rotary wire brushes. The valve can was done by hand. All three were then painted silver using Galvanized Repair Aluminium.
The inside of the tuning scale reflector was done in white gloss enamel. (Picture 3)

The chassis was then rebuilt and rewired whilst replacing all paper caps and poor resistors at the same time. The tuning reflector and drive cord were then fitted (Picture 4).

Finally the chassis was then powered up and tested, all was working, the alignment had to be done from scratch as when the chassis was striped the tuning slugs for the coils had to be removed to enable the retaining clips to be release.

Next came the cabinet, this was thoroughly washed and cleaned inside and out. The gold front was rubbed down with fine wet and dry. The cabinet was masked up this took some patience to do because of the shape and the recess between the gold front and the Bakelite. Once done the front was painted using gold acrylic spray paint (Picture 5). The cabinet was rubbed down to remove some scratching using 1200 wet and dry, it was then polished with T-Cut.

Attention was then turned to the knobs. These were cleaned and the remaining gold paint removed.
The one damaged knob was then repaired. The missing part (A large chip out of the edge) was built up using Araldite, allowed to go of hard then shaped up as required. All three knobs were then painted dark brown gloss. Finally the gold paint was replaced by small brush using Acrylic paint.

More pictures of the refurbished unit can be seen here:

http://s933.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/Refurbished/

Continued in next post

[davidgem1406]

Continuation:

Now comes the dial glass, compared to this the rest has been a walk in the park.
First scans at a ratio of 1:1 (70mm x 151mm) were made of the front and rear, the rear scan was never used.

The scan of the front was imported into MS Visio, a blank rectangle with the same dimensions was added to the page, the two items were lined up by their tops, the fun began.
The first thing to do was to find a font for the text, searching for this takes a long time and coming up with a perfect match would be almost impossible so we have to settle for the nearest match we can find. After several hours I settled on “MS Reference Sans Serif” at 8 point.

I wont go into the detailed construction of the new dial glass as it would take a small book to relate all the detail, instead I will make a brief outline.
First was to add another rectangle with a black fill for the background add to this a central rectangle with white fill and black border, then 2 more rectangles with rounded corners black fill and gold borders of the correct thickness. These were all sized and placed to match the original.

The scale markers were added to the central white rectangle, each mark using a construction line obtained from the original.
Then the text was added using the same method of construction lines.
Where horizontal positioning was needed the measurement was taken from the original and a construction line added to the new drawing.
Lastly the two circles at the bottom were added.
And so the whole thing was gradually built up over a long period of time.
When completed the new drawing was exported as a jpeg image with a 100% size and mirror imaged in a graphics package (Visio cant mirror image) (Picture 6)

A test print was made on paper but the result as far as the gold colour was concerned was not good it was more yellow than gold. It is not really possible to print gold on an inkjet printer.
We then had to think again as to how we were going to produce the final image on the printer.
The idea was to use transparent decal paper and place the image on the inside of the new glass, hence the need for a mirror image.

I then decided that to overcome the problem with the gold colour I would make the print without any colour for the gold, i.e. white, and then add the gold by using gold paint on the rear of the decal paper after it was stuck to the glass. So I made a copy of the original and removed the gold colour and exported that as a jpeg image (Picture 7). A test print looked quite good although I did notice that the red text was not particularly sharp, that was a bit strange given that the original drawing was pin sharp. It turned out to be a problem when exporting the drawing as a jpeg image.

Anyhow I continued and made a print on a clear waterslide sheet. The print looked good apart from loss of sharpness in the red. I left it to dry for a day then gave it 2 coats of acrylic varnish to seal it.
When thoroughly dry I cut it out to size soaked it in water for 30 seconds then tried to slide it of, it moved but stretched at the top a little. I had to end up peeling it of the backing and then placing it on the glass. I smoothed it out and left it to go off. The result was not to good as the glue showed white like bubbly in places. To cut the story short here I made another try for it this time I soaked it for maybe a minute and it then slid of OK and I was able to smooth it out OK.

After it was dry it still showed some sign of the glue in places but much better than before. I decided to complete it and masked up the three panels, 2 with the text and the one with the tuning marks. It was then given 3 light coats of gold spray paint, and left to dry. When dry the making was removed. I then found that the glue on the tape has reacted and become very sticky leaving glue all over the three panels. I managed to clean it off but it did leave its mark behind. All in all it was a result but not one I would accept, but the gold looked good. Something else was needed to avoid the problems of loss of sharpness in the red text, the waterslide glue showing and the tape reaction.

I decided on using transparency sheet with the printing on one side and the gold paint on the other, then to sandwich it between a sheet of glass at the front and a sheet of Perspex at the rear (Perspex being cheaper than glass and thinner). That would do away with mirror image, waterslide glue and hope fully the glue from the masking tape. That just leaves the red text not being sharp we can overcome this by printing from Visio and not using a jpeg image.

Note: I have just discovered that I can copy the Visio drawing and paste it into a graphics package, save it as a jpeg and the results for the text are much sharper than using export as a jpeg.
I now printed the image on a transparency sheet and the result was real good. IO gave it until the next day to dry then gave it 2 coats of clear acrylic varnish to seal it up. When it had enough time to dry I then masked up the 2 panels with the text and the centre panel again.
I now gave it a very light coat of gold acrylic spray paint and let it go off, this was followed by further light coats until I could see no sign of light showing through the gold parts of the image.
It was then left for a day to thoroughly dry (Picture 8).

Later the completed image was sandwiched between the glass and the Perspex sheets when fitted back into the cabinet. The chassis was refitted followed by testing and the rear/base panels fitted.
That was it completed, a lot of work and time but a good result (Pictures 9 & 10) The dial glass looks good when backlit (Picture 11).

More pictures of the completed radio can be found here:

http://s933.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/Refurbished/

Useable pictures of the dial glass can be found here:

http://s933.photobucket.com/albums/a.../Dial%20Glass/

Continued next post

[davidgem1406]

Continuation:

This is the last bit just for the remaining image and the 2 pdf documents mentioned earlier in the post.

The last image is of the completed dial glass fitted and back-lit.

Regards
Dave

[bobbyball]

WOW!

That IS a restoration from the ground up!!!

Well done!

Robert

[Patrick Dixon]

Lovely job.

[Paul LS]

Superb. I admire your patience.

[MALC SCOTT]

Wow, fantastic restoration. Better than when it came from the factory. Well done!

[slidertogrid]

Fantastic job!
Rich.

[neil29]

What a lovely result that is . ive looked at my one several times with its peeling/crazed dial and scruffy gold paint and thought it would look good when restored. but as of yet ive not done anything to it. dont want to have a go at my set do you . cheers neil.

[Tim]

Nice job! I generally approve of GEC sets, as all those I have worked on always seemed to be well engineered, and good quality. The brand never seemed to be as remembered as say Bush,Ekco or Murphy.

[davidgem1406]

Hi All,

Thanks for all the comments, nice to know others appreciate that work.
Neil 29, what part do you want me to do for you.. lol. You don't have to worry about the artwork for the tuning glass I can supply that for you.

Dave

[ajs37]

That's a great job Dave - on of the classic restorations! Like Tim, I think the build quality on GECs is good and solid. Thanks for writing it up.
Andy

[howard]

Nice work David,

Now that's what I call a proper restoration ! I like these GECs with the thermometer dials too.

Howard

[PJC58-Hythe]

Dave this is a great restoration and just the sort of thing I like doing, stripping it back completely.

Regarding the dial I have found some self adhesive inkjet paper which I used very sucessfully on a dial I recently did, albeit not on glass but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Saves all that messing with water and waiting for it to dry... use this link http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk...Papers_075.htm if you want to buy some and try it.

Once again well done, a job to be proud of!

[davidgem1406]

Hi PJC58-Hythe,

I have self adhesive paper sheet but they would be no use for this as the transparency is required to enable it to be back lit and to be able to view the scale pointer for tuning.

The finished item did not use water slide sheets but printed transparency sheet sandwiched between the glass and a clear acrylic sheet.

Dave