Still here, six years on.

I don't always know what to write, but it seems important that I should. If nothing else it's a sort of practice. Hopefully it may keep my mind flexible, and help me organize my thoughts. It's also a way to express myself. I don't talk often to others, and my mind tends to overflow.

Even though I do not watch much television, I still try to keep up with the news. As we edge closer to election time, politics dominates our collective conversation even more than usual, with all the anger and rhetoric (both well constructed and not) that goes with it.

I tend to avoid these topics, though I do have some deeply held views. The topics, the conversations become far too heated and human nature being what it is, it becomes too difficult to separate our emotions from our arguments. Though to be fair, in some cases the views and arguments are primarily based on emotion, which is again, a very human sort of thing.

I wish we could take a step back, take a collective breath, and perhaps proceed with kindness and civility. Good people working together can accomplish a lot, though not without effort.

I say this as much to remind myself as anything else.

-cliff    

Patience

It must be a boring night, if I'm writing on this.

I've finally started college, majoring in criminal justice. That fact, the criminal justice one, that is, seems to have surprised many people as being rather out of character for me. It surprised me a little as well but I've found myself rather interested in it. I'm also somewhat curious how it will go, seeing as how I'm extremely liberal, and the field itself seems to lean conservative. Though sometimes I'm loathe to use those terms.

Anyhow, if it suits me, I'll post more on this. I plan to finish that radio sometime, too.


-cliff

Also...

For those who are interested, there is more information about this particular radio here, as well as a set of electronic schematics linked at the end of the little article.

Radio Restoration 3

Afternoon folks. Just posting another batch of pictures today, nothing too earth-shaking. We cleaned up the insides a bit, cleaned off the tubes, and brushed off the...metal...holder..thing some. We've also yanked some wire out of an old, dead, computer power supply so that we have something to work with for now. Anyhow, on to the pictures!





Anyhow, that's all for now. We'll likely soon start replacing old wire, and we need to find somewhere to scavenge some capacitors, once we have that done, we'll see what else we need to do.

-cliff

Radio Restoration 2

Finished sanding the chassis, and also put a coat of walnut stain on it. Pretty happy with the results. I think we might do another coat of stain, and then use boiled linseed oil on it.


-cliff

Radio Restoration 1

Today I was at my grandparents house, with my father, to relight their furnace. While in their basement, my father and I spotted two antique radios, and old zenith, and, to my delight, and even older GE radio. I had known they were down here for a while, but today we asked my grandmother if we could take them, and she agreed.

My father laid claim to the zenith, and I decided after a bit that I'd like to try my hand at restoring the GE. Technically, it's a G-E F-63 Radio, apparently from 1937-1938. It was a little rough, but not in horrible shape, when we brought it home and plugged it in, the tubes and lights fired up, but we couldn't get any sound out of it. We'll work on that later.
For now, I've begun working on the chassis, I took the guts out, and started sanding the old finish off before I decided it would be a good idea to catalog the process here, and as such, pictures follow.
Excuse the iffy quality of the pictures, I hope they'll improve as time goes on (and as I remember to turn off bright over-head florescents.)

(Also, ignore the dates on the pictures, the camera that was used is a little slow.)


The radio itself. I've sanded the finish off of the top and plan to do the front, sides, and detail next.

Reverse.

The guts. I know all the fun stuff is on the bottom, but we'll get to that in another post.


And again.


The front panel, I apologize for the blurriness, will try to get a better picture up sometime.


The speaker and knobs.

My plan at the moment is to finish sanding the chassis, then, with the help of my father, refinish it, clean up the metal parts, and once I get the outside looking good, then will begin work on the innards. That will be the fun part, since I don't know a thing about it, and my father will be doing most of the work.

-cliff

Programming.

Working on learning c#. Might keep people posted. Might not.