Eleco GR102 - as received.

The Eleco GR range is by far Elecos most successful range of lanterns. It came with a massive array of options, such as semi cutoff, full cutoff and the lesser seen geared lanterns. An example of one is featured here, the GR102. This was kindly swapped with another collector, and entered the collection with its original and absolutely destroyed bowl. Owing to the rarity of the lantern, I knew another original would not show up, so sourced a GR150 bowl with the intentions of making it into the correct bowl for this. the original bowl features 90w refractor plates and a frosted out back panel to mask the control gear out, whilst still allowing light through.

Replicating such a bowl was a very delicate and drawn out task, one slip would mean the replicated bowl would be good for nothing. I had to remove the plates from the new bowl, and remove them from the original to transfer them over. Using tape, I then marked out where I would sand to remove the marks left from the original plates. Once the original plates were stuck on, I then masked off the plates and the front section so the now defined gear area could be sprayed with a frost paint to bring it to how it should be as original.

The lantern is now once again intact and sporting a very close to original bowl, and will soon be restored.