Beogram 4002 (5513): Restoring the Hood

Most Beogram restorations are not complete without restoring the hood. Many are badly scratched at this point in time...So, after plating the keypad contact terminals with gold, I set out to do the hood of the Beogram 4002 (5513) that I am restoring right now. Here are a couple of impressions of the original condition of the hood:

Seems someone went figure skating on it...;-). Another area:

The usual starting point is 220 or 320 grit sand paper depending on the depth of the scratches. This unit had a few pretty deep dings and so I started out with 220. Then it was time to claw my way back to translucency using ever finer paper grit. Here is an impression after the second (320) step:

At that point the hood looks like a piece of dark wood. After going through about 10 polishing steps after about 3 hrs, culminating with the 12000 level of Micro-Mesh, the hood was shiny and translucent again:

As usual the rubber bumpers at the front corners had degraded long ago, and only the part that was embedded in the hood plastic remained:

These bumpers add significantly to the 'user feel' of the Beogram since they transform a plastic-on-wood 'clonk' noise to a solid 'thump' which is much more pleasant. I drilled the decayed remnants out with a 2 mm drill bit that I outfitted with a handle:

Then I implanted sections of 2 mm O-ring using dabs of super glue gel at their ends:

The next step was to trim them to about 1 mm length, which makes the hood sit horizontal (there is a ~1 mm gap at the back when the hood hinge is installed). A 3D printed tool helps the cutting process to be identical on both sides:

Allright! All good now in the 'hood department'! This 4002 is on the way to be a looker again! This is Beolove!