Quite a few years ago, a friend and fellow collector gave me an excellent Dayton variocoupler that I had been admiring in his junk box ever since I saw it. I had planned to use it in a project and began the hunt for other bits and pieces. A few years later I found a matching variometer at a swap meet and I recently acquired a British-made variable grid leak and cap from a collector's estate. A request in ARF classifieds yielded a nice Murdock cased tuning cap. It all came together last week.......






Nice mahogany was difficult to locate locally - so I opted for red oak. Remarkably, I found a single well-figured, quarter-sawn piece at the very bottom of the stack at Lowe's.... it had a small split in one end and apparently had been culled over many times. I fumed the oak with ammonia to get a darker substrate and waxed it. It actually plays well for what it is - there is a bit of a learning curve to tuning such sets... but I'm now getting the hang of it and a range of about 600 to 1250 khz.

Splendid job. Looks great.

A beautiful job, excellent use of antique components, and faithful to construction techniques of the era, including the underboard recessed wiring, which came down to radio from telegraph instruments. Congratulations.

Very well done!

JG,

Your work is an aesthetic delight! Your craftsmanship sets a very high standard for us to follow.
An accolade from Jon the Grimm, a master of the craft, is high praise indeed.

Thank you for showing us your fine work.

John

Great effort - good to see you found a use for the gridleak.



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Thanks guys..... It was my first attempt at fuming oak - I'd have liked it a bit darker but it turned out okay. Here is the before and after (compared to a scrap (L) of the same board)....



From what I've read - white oak responds better than red oak.... which seems to be the case on these 2 bases I fumed along with the radio base board....



The base on the left was white oak and that on the right was red oak.... It's a fairly simple technique.

Now That's a breadboard!

I'm surprised mahogany is that difficult to find, though yeah, I know Lowes doesn't sell it.
Though, I found the poplar pieces Lowes sells make for great projects! Stain it red mahogany and coat it with amber shellac, it looks great!

Nice work there!

-Steve