1949 PYE Type 39 J/H Radio – Restored!

Follow up from https://bmorton.com/posts/pye49/

The Pye radio lives again! I’m pretty happy with how this turned out.

It was in worse shape than I’d anticipated – the varnish was pretty far gone and the paint was chipped. The wood had swelled from water damage at some point.

A bit of sanding was done on the sides, and they were repainted a matte grey. I attempted to cover up the holes in the varnish with dutch oil, but the result was… not good. The wood surface was just falling apart anyway.

In the end, a wood-grain vinyl wrap was used. I don’t really consider this a cop-out as the original finish was more or less the 70 year old equivalent – a thin veneer over plywood. It actually looks pretty sharp. I’ll re-paint the Pye logo on the top of the radio later on.

Here’s some shots of the original damage/fix in progress.