So, after many weeks of heavy lifting, long hours, and hot weather, we [My father, his employees- which includes me] are finally moved out of our old shop, and into the newer, larger one!

My father owns a furniture refinishing shop, called "Peninsula furniture repair and refinishing LLC", and has operated it out of a leased building that use to serve as a gas station, and may have been a house before that. the owners have been trying to sell this place for 3-4 years, and finally sold it out from under dad recently, so we have had to pack up and ship out, pushing dad to expand his business.

The new building is part of a small industrial park situated a block away from moderate traffic. besides having to pay less for the building itself, Dad no longer needs to rent a separate storage unit, pay for lawn care, or a few other miscellaneous things. at the same time, we now have real AC/heating, a little short of 3x as much space, and [working] plumbing.

As big as this new building is, it still couldn't hold all of Dad's furniture from the old shop + the stuff from the storage unit, so some stuff has had to be given away or trashed.

I like my gift for all my hard work, an old shortwave radio that I had been salivating over (don't think I really drooled all over it! It is way too dirty for me to get that close to with my tongue!)



I have dusted off the outside of it, but there is 1-inch thick dust on the inside, and I am not entirely sure about the state of the electronics inside (and how to handle/clean vacuum tubes). Do you guys have any tips for cleaning this old radio and getting it working again?

I think you could use a Shop Vac or some other kind of vaccum. That would suck the dust and prevent stray dust from floating away. Do you think that would work? I think about this a lot because I hate dust and it makes me sneeze a lot.

well, of course I could suck away the dust, I was more worried about the electronical part for the shortwave. I don't want to ruin anything in it.
so, I guess this is the better question
:::What do I do to make sure that the radio doesn't accidentally catch fire or break itself even further when I plug it in and power it on?

Make sure that it's not a hot chassis radio before you start, this is one page on hot chassis: http://www.geojohn.org/Radios/MyRadios/Safety.html

A hot chassis radio can easily kill you when plugged in if you don't know what you're doing, and it should be rewired so it's no longer hot chassis.

Once that's taken care of, your biggest concern is aging capacitors, and there's multiple schools of thought on how to take care of these, depending on how authentic you want your restoration to be. Myself, I'd cut open the capacitors and put a modern capacitor of the same rating inside the case, but that's not the most authentic way to go.