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Restoring Old Dials, Front Labels . . . or designing new Restoring antique or vintage radios often means rebuilding or repairing damaged cases. But what do you do if a panel, label or dial is damaged or missing? You cheat a bit and create a vintage replica, 2004 style! N o matter how professionally constructed an electronic project is inside, others judge it by the exterior appearance. Hand drawn labels can look awful! The good news is a computer enables anyone to create professional custom labels and dials in a short time. These techniques are excellent when restoring old radios too, as spare parts can be impossible to find. Computer software helps All that’s needed is a graphics application like Photoshop Elements. It’s priced at about $200 (or included with many digital cameras). Elements is considered by many to be the among the most versatile graphics and digital software, only surpassed by the full version of Photoshop (which sells for considerably more but is very much more powerful). Copy or restoration projects will also need a scanner or a camera to copy originals. Scanners regularly sell for A back-lit radio dial from a 1936 Melodious is missing text and details. 50  Silicon Chip less than $100 these days (especially USB scanners); “good enough” digital cameras have also come down dramatically in price. Existing designs can be copied or custom projects created for printing on a home printer. You can also get true photographic prints at a photo lab; even have transparencies made or the design screen printed onto plastic, glass or metal. You don’t have to be an artist if some lateral thinking is employed. For example, shapes like rectangles and curves can be drawn perfectly using the lasso tool or the rectangle or ellipse tool if appropriate, then filled with any colour. If you only need a portion of a curve, the rest can be cut away. This guide is based on Photoshop 7 on a PC or Mac, however the techniques apply to any graphics application with layers. ber of pages of tracing paper, with the original drawing at the bottom. You can draw on a new layer and still see the original art below but not affect it in any way. Layers also allow parts of the design to be on individual layers, especially in different colours, allowing considerable creative control. Many projects need a custom meter scale. On most commercial panel meters, there is a clear bezel which Layers? unclips to give access to the factory Layers can be thought of as a num- scale plate. This plate can be scanned or photographed as a template for the new dial (see photo). Often two tiny screws hold the scale in place – be careful not to bend the meter pointer as you slide the scale out. And don’t lose the screws! Place the digital (scanned/photo-graphed) image into the graphics application (in RGB mode) and adjust the image size of the dial to 100% or 1:1 scale. The image resolution settings need to be at The restored copy printed onto a transparency least 200 dpi, with 300 dpi optimum and 400 dpi the is sandwiched in place for a perfect result. siliconchip.com.au Panels and w ones! By Kevin Poulter upper limit. Higher resolution makes no improvement on clarity but takes a lot more memory and hard drive space and slows the entire project down. The meter shown needed a new voltage range and colour-coded scale. The most important aspect of this meter scale is the curve. Start by making a new layer to draw the curve on, using the circular lasso tool, stretched to an oval football shape. By not altering the original image, it remains as a guide until the new design is completed. You can draw a lasso curve shape as close as possible, then change it to precisely match, using ‘transform selection’. Alternatively, keep drawing shapes until you have the right one - it’s not hard with a little practice. The lasso shape can be moved to exact alignment using the arrow keys on the PC keyboard. Complex shapes may need hand drawing using a lasso. Zoom in to a huge enlargement then hand draw the shape required. Once the oval shape is drawn, fill it with white. Draw a similar shape for the bottom of the curve. Hit the delete, leaving a circular band, ready to add the colours. (Extra Photoshop techniques and tools like guidelines can help, however they are too numerous to expand on, so check the software instruction manual.) Now select the magic wand and click on the white curve. A selection of ‘marching ants’ will appear around the entire white curve. Initially you are only adding the red on the far left of the scale, so the circular selection needs reducing. Select the lasso tool, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) and draw around the unwanted area. When this subtraction is completed, fill the small left section with red. Repeat these steps for each colour. Set the colour to black and type the numbers and text. Fill the bottom layer siliconchip.com.au The original meter dial . . . with white to make a background and merge all the layers. The new dial is completed. The graphic can be printed on a desktop printer or at a photo lab and then laminated, or glued onto the existing scale plate. Dials and labels Restoration of a radio dial or label employs very similar techniques. In the next example, the Melodious radio circa 1936 is in good order, but the scale on the back-lit dial is substantially missing (see photo on opposite page). To avoid the cost and difficulty of reprinting a new dial, photograph the damaged original, make a restored replica in the computer, output onto a transparency or clear film (eg, overhead projector film) in the printer, then sandwich it in place. The original remaining printing on the dial will probably need to be removed before sandwiching the new transparency. If the dial body appears to be resistant to petrochemicals, metho, turps or even thinners can be used. If in doubt, test on an area that won’t be seen. Making a clear film transparency of your artwork can be easier than expected. Some inkjet printers will print directly onto clear film or professional photo labs can make a transparency. Alternatively, print your restored label to normal paper and use it as the master to copy onto clear film at some libraries or schools. A number of photocopiers will also copy onto . . . and the new one, produced on a PC, printed on a colour inkjet and glued directly to the meter face. clear film. With back-lit dials, these techniques can result in a very believable result. Reproduction labels and dials for old radios can be made employing the same techniques as the dial described earlier. Photograph or scan the original, or another collector’s better example, then use it as the template for the new one. Rola speakers Rola was Australia’s largest speaker manufacturer based in Richmond (Vic). The top performing twelve-inch model (12U) was made in February 1951. Rola in their wisdom date-stamped most of their loudspeakers, which is very useful to reasonably gauge the age of radios with a Rola speaker installed. After more than 50 years, the 12U speaker is near perfect, except for the metallised paper label and the paint around it. Any attempt to remove the label to repaint the body results in a confetti of fragments, so it needs replacement before there is nothing left to copy. Firstly a photograph was taken ‘square-on’ and loaded into a Photoshop page. Where curves and shapes are similar on each side or corner, you only need to make one of each, as the July 2004  51 After copying and restoring in Photoshop. As the label was originally printed on a metallised paper, vignetted tones were added and printed on a metalliclook photographic paper. so it was enlarged considerably and traced around with the lasso too like other complex graphics. When all the shapes and text were completed, the layers were merged and saved as a .tiff. This was sent on CD to a photo lab, for printing on a new Kodak paper with a metallic look that catches the light. Then the finished label was laminated with a thin clear film to ensure it lasts indefinitely. If your artwork is a replacement for a valve radio dial, it can be screenprinted onto glass or acrylic, for a result barely discernible from the original. The minimum production run at a screen-printers is around ten identical glass dials. While this is typically $300, collectors often join forces to have a batch made, splitting the costs so each share only $30. Entire front panels for custom projects can be printed onto paper or film and held in place with a perspex panel. If printing direct to a transparency, one idea employed by manufacturers is to print the text back to front, so the plain side can face outside. The text will then never wear off. Whatever your label and dial requirements, a desktop computer can be used to produce top-class results. After all, that’s what most manufacturers now use. SC The original label on a 1951 Rola speaker. others are made instantly by copying, flipping and moving them into position. Like the meter, draw the top curve shape and fill it with white. Conversely, the black areas are drawn and filled with black. When this label was originally produced, it was hand-drawn, so you’ll soon find the original is far from 100% symmetrical. The conclusion - a modern PC can be used to quickly and easily make a more precise label! As all text was originally hand drawn as well, it was fortunate nearly all the lettering matched Helvetica font, with huge spacing between characters. The Rola brand name was a unique design by a graphic artist, Here’s how it was done using Photoshop Copying the graphics involves drawing shapes onto a new layer and filling with colour, in this case white. The first football shape oval is drawn and filled, then another oval drawn below it. 52  Silicon Chip When the second oval shape is drawn, press the delete key on the keyboard. This leaves the top curve filled with white. Remove any unwanted white in the lower area of the graphic. The finished white curve. From here, restore other areas by making a new layer to draw a copy of another section. Then fill the new section with black or white as required. It’s important to note once a corner or repeated shape has been drawn, it can be duplicated and flipped easily to save redrawing. When all design elements are complete, add the text and merge layers for a completed graphic. siliconchip.com.au