Another one of those “Labor of Love” radios-this 1947 Astra model DR107. Made in Toronto, Canada by Brand and Millen Ltd., a company which produced a number of brand named radios.
Including a full cabinet re-finish, the job took over 14 hours to complete.
The wiring under the chassis was a total butcher-job by previous “repair-men”. The chassis was incorrectly connected directly to the ground bus (which is one side of the AC power line), rather than isolated by the proper capacitor-resistor arrangement called for in the schematic.
A complete re-capping was done, along with replacement of a number of badly out of tolerance resistors.
The original dial pointer and cord were missing. I constructed a new pointer, using a short one I had in salvage stock, and then adding a length of heavy copper wire to it. Once constructed it was painted red. Details of this process are seen in the last photo on this page. This was then strung with new #74 dial cord.
A new dial backing was made with bright file-folder stock, and glued to the metal base.
Before stripping and refinishing the cabinet, I had to glue and clamp some seams which were separating.
Speaker cone had many tears but these were all repaired to my satisfaction with GC service cement.
Other small parts were installed and repairs were done, too numerous to detail here.