Our work can be very varied and present a few interesting challenges.  A friend asked us to see if we could fix some broken parts on an old 1940’s bakelite radio. The broken parts were ‘spars’ on the speaker grill that had come off and needed re-fabricating. bakelite was really the earliest ‘plastic’ to be commercially used in manufacturing. It is relatively strong, looks good, was relatively cheap to produce and is pretty much heat resistant, lending itself to the old style radio’s that could get quite warm due to the valve filaments.

We ended up making ‘fake’ spars for the speaker grill but carefully cutting down thin strips of balsa wood, which is very easy to work, and then using white pvc wood glue to strengthen the balsa wood. This was then carefully sanded using a fine grit sandpaper and then the whole assembly was painted with an acrylic paint that was mixed to match the bakelite colour – a mottled brown colour. The final result was very good. A part that matched the original missing pieces and was matched colour wise to a point where it was hard to see that the parts were fabricated.