Thought I'd just share my latest project. When I showed it to my wife, she asked, "What's it for?" When I told her she then asked, "Why?" I figured she'd understand by now, but no, she still doesn't get it. So I'm sharing it here . . .
The grill plate is from and old Victor movie projector speaker cabinet (I only had the grill, nothing else). The Victor grill came with a very poor attempt at putting wrinkle paint onto it. I burnished the paint off, but it looked too shiny-new. So, I sprayed the grill with bleach and put it out in the sun. I did this several times in one day, and it got a nice white oxidation on it, that when brushed away gave a nice aged gray color. I then painted the letters and the outsice circle with an Ivory color paint.
The cabinet is made for an old beehive frame. I took it apart, stripped off the old paint, and then glued the pieces back together inside-out.
The tolex on the sides of the cabinet are from a very old shower curtain that has a great vintage look to it. It's thicker than regular tolex, and has very little stretch. Leaving the pieces out in the sun gave them a little more flexibility when putting them onto the cabinet.
The leather handle is from an old suitcase that was falling apart; the handle was the only thing that still looked good, especially after cleaning it with a good leather cleaner.
The speaker is a 1954 Jensen P12Q that I bought off Reverb. It was non-functioning, so I re-coned it into a 30 watt and gave it a ribbed cone.
For the speaker jack on the back, I took a black jack plate, lightly sanded it, and painted it the same color as the letters on the front grill.
The speaker with re-cone was ~$100. The tan and brown tolex and brown piping are from remnants I already had. The beehive came from my brother who used to keep bees. The RCA Victor dog, Nipper, is my grandson's. I thought it was appropriate to include the dog in a couple of pictures.