Vintage Radio for Computer Hard Drives

Vintage Radio for Modern Tech

3/17/2016

by Steph Sign up to receive project updates by email!

Mom volunteers at a thrift store and she grabbed this find before anyone else! She took it home where I spotted it and took it to my house to see what I could make. After some thought, I realized it would be a great spot to put my computer hard drives and dock. The front would look like a radio and the back could be open (for ventilation) and hide some of my tech gear. I’m working on a new office desk so this radio came along at the perfect time.

Materials:

Vintage Radio
(2) Scrabble tile holders
Wood Stain (Minwax Mission Oak)
(3) Wood shelves (made from scrap wood in my garage)
Wood glue
Hot glue gun
Aluminum foil tape
Level (I needed a short one so I used the level on my iPhone- which you can find in the compass app)

Tech:

Computer Dock (Elgato Thunderbolt Dock)
Hard drives (G-Tech mobile & G-tech external)

I started by cutting some scrap wood to size for the shelves.

Mom thought scrabble tile holders would make a perfect bracket for my shelves, so I cut them to size and covered them with a dark stain.

I unscrewed the guts from the radio and kept a few parts to add back in place.

I figured out the placement of the shelves and brackets. With the drives plugged into my dock I only need one cable to connect everything to my computer.

I used hot glue to attach the bottom shelf and the radio knobs back in place.

I used aluminum tape to attach the dials in place. Even though these parts will not function anymore, I wanted to attach them back for the full vintage radio feel.

I cut the radio station graphic down and used double sided tape to attach it to a cut piece of card board.

I hot glued those parts in place.

I used wood glue to attach the brackets to the inside of the radio.

After that dried, I leveled out the shelf to get the left side bracket location.

I glued the other brackets in place and let dry.

I decided not to glue the shelves in place in case I need to move them for cables. I can easily use wood glue in the future if I need to secure them.

I put my dock and hard drives in place, connected everything together, grabbed my computer and done! A vintage radio to hide my modern tech.

Vintage Radio for Modern Tech. MotherDaughterProjects.com

Have an other ideas for hiding tech/cables/desk storage? Let us know in the comments!

Please note: We are not sponsored by any of the companies/products that we used. These products were picked and bought by us.

FYI: We are not professionals, and we don’t claim to be. This is what we found worked for our project. Yours may need a little different approach. Safety first!

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