A few handy tips I’ll try to pass on. (not just radios either!)

The wireless tips section. (Don’t try too much of this at home!)

Remember - Electrickity is dangerous, don’t mess with it.

Don’t stick your fingers in plug sockets, it tends to hurt. (only applies to folk with really thin, odd shaped fingers.)

Don’t stand in a bucket of water while repairing your radio, unless you REALLY feel you have to. (don’t want to stop your creativity or anything!)

Soldering Irons get HOT at one end. Pick them up using the OTHER end. (I know!)

If it smells like something’s died at the back of your shed, just have a look to see if the last thing you plugged in has a selenium rectifier in it. When they die they smell pretty foul, but not in an electrical sort of way! Seventies Thorn TVs with a selenium EHT doubler or tripler were a great example. Phone calls like "My TV’s not working and could you excuse the smell in the house, I don’t think my dog’s very well" would result in you being able to walk in and diagnose the fault without even turning the telly on! And god bless Thorn with their Jellypot transformers, it would only ever be the rectifiers! Unlike Philips with their lovely G6s and suchlike. Anyway, enough about TVs for now.

Before condemning your radio, make sure that it’s plugged in, switched on, the socket’s switched on and there’s still a fuse in the plug. It’s amazing how often you ‘borrow’ a fuse and forget you borrowed it. And how often you forget one of the above!

After you’ve tried the above things, make sure you’ve actually turned the power on to your shed (if you’re in a shed.) I have only made this mistake ONCE and then spent the rest of the night kicking myself round the garden.

If you can’t see what you’re doing without your glasses, then remember to wear the buggers. Don’t do what I usually do and forget them and spend all night squinting at things because you’re too idle to go and get them. At least the stuff in these radios is a decent size, some more modern stuff uses resistors which are so small you can hardly see them, let alone any value written on the bloody things. And a magnifying glass can be a great help as well if you’re really stuck.

If you know a handy component seller who can still get hold of lead based solder, buy some before it’s too late. The modern stuff doesn’t agree with some of these old things and your joints won’t be as good as they look. I’ve been there, believe me.

Cabinet Fettling (my way……)

If you decide to stain a cabinet always try the stain out on a bit that nobody will ever see again because it’ll look bugger all like it does on the tin which has usually been fading in the sun on a shelf for the last three years before you bought it because the shade you want never sold because it ‘wasn’t very popular’. Jacobean oak’s a case in point, surely it’d be quicker just to paint your wood black and call it a draw. Mahogany usually manages to end up pinkish for some reason known only to the numpties who make the stuff. If you know a kind of stain that really does what it says on the tin please let me know!

This is probably not one for the purists among you, but in a lot of cases when a cabinet’s seen better days I’ve found that a good strip with nitromors works to get off all the old varnish or french polish or whatever’s on there, dry the cabinet out thoroughly, rub it down with some nice fine sandpaper (about 320 grit’ll do it) and then stain it a colour of your choice. Use woodstain, coloured varnishes never look right, they tend to mask the grain in my experience. So once you’ve got the wood the right shade this is where I do it a bit differently. I usually take the cabinet to work and give it three coats of two pack clearcoat! The same stuff I use on cars………. Joking aside though, it gives one hell of a shine and if you polish it with t-cut to get rid of the false gleam you can get it to look like glass! Or put one coat on and it still shows the grain, two and the grain’s fainter. I know it’s a bit unconventional, but I’ve been refinishing wooden dashes and door cappings on vintage cars like that for years and it’s always worked well enough to make them look like new. And if you’re as bad with a paintbrush as I am, it’s a great way not to get brush marks in the finish. And don’t even go there with French Polishing! That’s something for folk with a lot of time to kill or who are being paid a lot of money for doing it. Lovely effect in the end, but good old two pack does it for me every time!

If you decide to remove the speaker grille cloth for cleaning, try not to get it too wet with whatever you use to clean it as the old things have a tendency to shrink when they dry and don’t fit any more. This can be a bit of a pest, to say the least. I’ve found that one of the best things to use is an Autosmart product, G101 non-caustic cleaner. Diluted, it’ll shift almost anything. It’s a car valeting chemical usually trade only, but most valeters will sell you a jarfull if you ask nicely. It’s worth it. Can I say, though, that storing it in an old plastic coke bottle doesn’t work because the stuff rots the plastic eventually and drips through the shelf it’s on and into your Bush DAC90A (or whatever’s sat under it) rendering it damp and unhappy (although surprisingly clean……..)

And if you’re using superglue for pete’s sake don’t get it on your fingers. It sticks fingers better than anything else in the world. You usually find that the crack you’ve been holding together so carefully for the past ten minutes hasn’t stuck at all, but you remove loads of skin trying to get your fingers back. It does stick nasty deep cuts together though if you miss with the trusty stanley knife, like I do quite regularly at work. Stings like buggery though but it does save a trip to casualty on occasion.

Don’t forget to bring the radio in that you put outside for a minute to make some room. IF it goes dark and it stays out there, then you don’t notice for a few days and it rains (a lot) then your pride and joy ends up in Theatre of crud with terminal cabinet warping and veneer peeling. (if you’re wondering why ‘theatre of crud’ think back to the 60’s horror film with Vincent Price as the world’s hammiest and most demented actor, Edward Lionheart.) Radios and rain don’t mix!

Soldering Iron Tips!

Plastic and soldering iron tips don’t mix… and if they do; they smell bad!
Always switch your soldering iron on before use. It reduces the warm up time considerably!
Don’t clean your tip with thermite. At least not if you want to be able to find it again afterwards, along with anything within the nearest three yards!
If you use a soldering gun, keeping the trigger pressed for 10 minutes trying to dislodge the solder they use in 40s Fergusons will only melt the gun, NOT the solder. Love to know what the stuff’s made of!
Gas soldering irons never have any gas in them when you need them, and there’s never any in the house either. The refill cans seem to disappear overnight wherever you leave them!
On a more serious note, a thermostatic soldering iron is a big help if you’re dealing with PCBs, saves spending half the night fixing the tracks you knackered with the £2.99 el cheapo soldering iron from the car boot sale! Save that for the Fergusons!
And if you do work with PCBs a lot, buy a solder sucker to make life easier when you’re removing bits. It leaves nice neat holes to stick the new bits through as well!
If you want to heat your poker soldering iron up in the fire - make sure it’s not an electric fire!
Works well with the old plumbers bar as well if you’ve run out of proper stuff!
Vaseline is not flux!
Flux is a lousy ointment for soldering iron burns. (so is vaseline…..)
18’s gauge Tinned copper wire often pretends to be solder; you can tell it’s not, when it doesn’t melt after several minutes touching the soldering iron!
Always wet your sponge, especially when washing your back
Antex is not another name for a dead ant! (Think about it)
If you don’t want to make indoor fireworks, don’t use an earthed soldering iron on a live chassis!
The best time to tin a soldering iron tip, is while it is still warming up (oops.. that was a real tip!
If Mars is in conjunction with Venus - get a telescope and have a look at it!
Dropping a radio chassis into a bath of molten solder is not the best way to cure a dry joint!
Always hold your soldering iron the same way you would hold a pen - NOT the way you would hold a screwdriver; it’s too easy to poke yourself in the face or worse!
No! a hedgehog is not an environmentally friendly alternative to a sponge - although it can be used to scrape your feet on!
A soldering iron will probably not work during a power cut!
Soldering is FUN!

A few tips on Classic Cars for the uninitiated.

If you develop the urge to buy a classic car, there are a few things that it’s handy to know.

Rust is NOT your friend. If you can poke your fingers through the bodywork in several places, then there’s definitely a hint of rust about. Unless you are a bit of a whizz with a MIG welder this can be hideously expensive to repair. If the classic you’re looking at has plenty of rust and you’re going to have to pay a man to fix it, look somewhere else for a car unless it’s rarer than the proverbial rocking horse droppings or you positively, definitely have to have that car.
Beware of the bodger. It’s amazing how much crud you can hide under a mound of filler and a coat of shiny paint. It’s also amazing how much crummy welding will still pass an MOT even though it’s not really doing anything except covering holes up with badly shaped patches. It’s better to buy a car that needs welding but hasn’t been cocked up in the past rather than buy one which has been visited by Captain Pigeonshit and Corporal Underseal, two of the bodger’s favourite assistants. Volkswagen Beetles are particularly prone to this kind of thing due to the fact that half the so-called restorers haven’t got a clue HOW a Beetle’s supposed to be put together. If the heater channels are welded to the floorpan inside the doors, it’s a cock-up. If the floors are welded to the doorsteps underneath it’s a cock-up. If the doors don’t shut properly don’t believe ‘em if they tell you it’s just the hinges, look at the bit the hinges are fastened to, that’s the bit that’ll be missing! If the bumpers flap up and down, it’s probably because there’s a sad lack of metal where they bolt on. In fact, Beetles, Campers and all the aircooled VWs are usually the victims of botched welding somewhere unless you can find one of the rare ones that are either original or have been restored by somebody who knows what they’re doing.