Atwater Kent model 38

Hey guys, new to TRF so I'll try to catch up a bit. Bought an AK 38 off ebay a couple of years ago and just now getting around to it. I'm restoring the cabinet in parallel with refurbishing the electronics ( optimism at its best, lol).

I started by cleaning the power supply mounting base and cabinet. I used naval jelly on the really rusty spots. Matching the PS green paint wasnt that hard, it may not be an exact match, but anyone who saw one new, is probably dead. I used Krylon camoflauge paint ( olive) for the power supply and the dark brown for the cabinet. The center panel of the top I used bright gold, Ace hardware

If you are planning on restoring this radio, let me give you some warnings...
1 They used all rubber insulated wiring, they tend to crumble, and short out.
2 The power supply holds all paper electrolytics, the audio output transformer, and, a filter choke.
This type of set is difficult to rebuild.

Thx Bill, I have experienced all the above. I removed the chokes and capacitors from the tar. One of the chokes was bad. I replaced it with  a 750 ohm resistor and upped the capacitance of the filter caps. Im in the process of putting the power supply and everything back to gether and looking forward to bringing it back up slowly.

I have pictures of the chokes and caps,once the tar is removed. The caps, are actually long rectangular metal, resembling packs of chewing gum on steroids. If I can figure out how to post pics, I'll share them.

Thanks. I once had a model 40, and, It was blowing fuses, and, rectifiers. Checking proved that the filter caps were dead shorted.

I have both a AK 38 and a 40. I never dug into them yet because of the tar so they're shelf queens for now.

Tony, wasnt that big a deal, a big mess. However,  Ive read of people replacing the caps, without removing the tar. They melted enough to find the 3 wires to the caps and cut them and replace the caps I could not locate them, so I melted and removed the internals. I lost one of the chokes in the process, my clumsiness, but Ive replaced it with a resistor. I know of someone who replaced all the chokes, including the speaker choke with resistors. Works fine.

I'd like to restore a 37 and a 40 someday

Here is a before pic of the top and the restored top and cabinet





Here is a before and after the power supply mounting plate

Nice work !!

Transformer before and after






The filter caps and chokes removed from the tar.

The tuning knob, before and after I cleaned and wiped the numbers and notches with oil based art paint.