[R-390] Front panel saga

[Flowertime01 at wmconnect.com]

Barry wrote,

"I'm hoping that I can get the panel smoothed out with the JB-Weld such that 
it is imperceptible where the old engravings were."

Barry, before you can get the panel that flat, you are going to be sanding a 
lot of aluminum.

Walk that panel around to a few trophy shops.
Most of the shops have a pretty good size engraving machine. They often
do large platters and things like that. They can set your panel up and 
"recut" it for you. Let them go at it free hand into the current groves. They can 
set up a "Reasonable" few letters and transcribe any letters that are just to 
flat to follow by hand. YMMV. Here they may have to work from a different "font" 
to follow but scribe the line to match the current stamped font.

Then you can fill the spots and maybe work a few errant scribe lines.
 

I do not know how much you have into the receiver, but you could ask here for 
a different panel. There were some available once upon a time.

You could set down on the anvil with a glass, cold chisel and hammer and bang 
a few characters. You may have to grind some steel to make some nice corners 
on some of the letters. After paint some varied scribes could come up looking 
very good.

Does any one have a set of stamps that match the engraving?

I would not give up on the panel yet.
The flip side is a lot of hours and not necessarily a large return on the 
time.
If you are doing a fix and sell, ask for a panel here on the reflector.
If this is one for your own, I would ask around a few engraving shops.

The trophy guys could likely point you to a source.

Roger KC6TRU