Wheels For The AW15 Tasman Cabinet?

[Michael J Boessen]

Hi, All:

Putting the finishing touches on a Scott AW15.  I notice some 3/8" holes at the corners of the base.  My cabinet had large nickel plated tacks on the bottom, but the holes make me think that it might originally have had casters.  I am presuming that if it did, they would have been wooden wheels.

So, if I am correct that it had wheels, would these be more or less period correct?

https://www.vandykes.com/wooden-wheel-ball-bearing-steel-stem-caste...

Thanks!

Mike

[David C. Poland]

I have seen a couple Scott cabinets on wheels, but believe were added later. 

The nickel plated skid tacks are what I have seen on the couple dozen Scott cabinets I have had over the years.

About an inch diameter and 3 points securing them. On my floors, I mostly add the thick felt pads, for sliding.

[Michael J Boessen]

Hi, David:

Thanks for the info.  I'm waiting to hear from my customer what type floor he will be situating the cabinet on.  I like the felt idea, but worry a bit that folks might wet mop the floor and saturate that felt with water.  On the other hand, visualizing the cabinet with wheels on it is definitely off-putting to me.  I suspect we are going to settle on larger diameter, modern, soft plastic screw-0n glides.

[David C. Poland]

Agree - dislike appearance of casters - and to mount just inside the base skirt adds instability to the cabinet. 

Those blue teflon sliders come  in several shapes and include 2 sided adhesive mounting tape. Have used triangular shape on front corners and a couple of the longer 4 inch strips on each side work well and prevent direct contact with the floor. Slide pretty well on lower pile carpet, too.

[Michael J Boessen]

Hi, David:

Pretty much what we settled on.  I am to put 1 1/4" round nylon feet on the cabinet and he is going to get  some of the sliders. 

Attached are some poor snapshots with my shop camera of the finished radio.  I had to replace all the veneer on the front, and I have never had much luck getting it to look exactly like the 80 year old veneer that remains on the rest of the cabinet.  I tinted it as close as I could, and the result is not bad.

One of the most agonizing aspects of this radio did not come upon me until I installed the chassis.  I had to replace the dial, and Radio Daze sent me one on a frosted background.  I thought nothing of it until I installed the chassis, and couldn't read a single number.  Then I realized that the numbers are not read directly, and are actually "projected" on the back of the window on the escutcheon.  They were kind enough to make a replacement dial on clear background.  However the replacement window screen was "clear" on the white band, and kind of a sparkly background on the colored strips, so no projection on the white band, and blurred on the colored portion.  I fixed this by coating the back of the window with 2 coats of clear lacquer to get rid of the "sparkly" effect, and then covering the back of the screen with Scotch magic tape.  The result is fairly good.  I sent them an email explaining how it works and what needs to be done, so maybe folks will get a working pair in the future.

The next thing about the dial, as you probably already knew, is that the alignment between the chassis dial drum and the window on the cabinet front is immensely critical.  The dial drum, despite how it looks at first glance, cannot be adjusted sideways without removing the bottom, loosening mounting screws, loosening screws on the drum, making an educated guess  how far to move it, putting it all back together, recalibrating the dial and installing it to see  how you did.  I was dumbfounded how hard it is to get the projected image aligned in the bands on the screen.  Literally about 20 thousandths of an inch of lateral error will cut off the edges of the numbers between the bands.  It would be nice if you could just slide the chassis a little sideways, but there is zero slop in the holes for the volume and "static" control.  I never got it perfect, but after 3 hours, I finally quit on it.  Is there an easier procedure for this?

The last quandry was the location of the amp chassis.  The operator's manual says it should be on the left, but if you do that, there is no access to the headphone jack.  Most of the pictures I saw have it on the right side as viewed from the rear, so that is how I installed it.  Still mighty difficult to get at that headphone jack next to the speaker base.  Not sure what Scott was thinking there.  I attached a couple of mounting tabs to the amp chassis so it could be screwed down.  I also left out the rear screws on the bottom cover, put a spacer under each of them and put a couple of stout wood screws in there to secure the chassis.  The radio is going to have to go home assembled, as I don't think you can expect the average Joe to assemble one of these on their own.  I kind of hate the FM  antenna in the rear view, but my customer really wanted FM on the blue band, so it couldn't be helped.

Thanks again for all of your help.  I couldn't have done it without a lot of help from you, and parts from Kent.

Best

Mike

[David C. Poland]

Looks pretty good.  

The control shaft holes usually allow a bit of shifting the receiver in cabinet.

The AW 15 chassis was shipped with a 8x10 or so drilled Walnut wood panel with escutcheons attached.

The original owner had the chore of moving the escutcheons to the console cabinet that arrived separately from the cabinet factory (usually Rockford Peerless Furniture Co.), using an ice pick to start the holes to attach the several escutcheons.

The existing escutcheon screw holes do limit the position of the dial escutcheon color strips to the projection.

Filling the little screw holes to get a fresh start drilling new little holes might have helped you.