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Need help recreating old radio dial


C

Colonel Travis

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Restoring an old radio, the dial is warped, brittle, no good. Instead of buying a repro I wanted to make my own and save the cash. Here's the dial:

dial.jpg


1.) I can finagle the lines and numbers in an arc with the warp text tool but it doesn't look good. What I guess I really need to do is have them go around (actually, partially around) an imaginary, smaller, diameter circle. Not sure how to do that.

2.) Also I'm not sure how to squish those lines exponentially closer as you go down the dial.

Any and all suggestions welcomed, this has been driving me nuts for a couple days. Thanks.
 
I love a challenge do you have the template for that, dimensions and all?
 
It's a Philco 91 from 1933 or 1932:
philco.jpg

Hard to get exact dimensions because the dial is so warped. Measuring as best I can, the diameter appears to be 5 1/4 inches and the width is 1 1/4 inches. Dial photo above is slightly bigger than life size. No template whatsoever. Crazy part is that this is about as simple of an old radial dial (or partial radial) as you can get but I've been unable to find a photo of an original or reproduction. You can find all photos of all kinds of old crazy dials with numbers and lines and colors and crap all over them. But this mundane thing? Nope.

By the way, I can type up some regular lines like this (shift + \) |||||||| and then cram them together with Tracking in the Character Panel. That may be the way to go, I don't know. Haven't tried the whole length of them to see if that would work.
 
Well if you can get your hands on illustrator, You do the first 5 lines with the first one having a cut out piece at the top. The lines at this stage are parallel to each other and the first one is made slightly thicker. After grouping the five bars, press alt+the right key, then scale it horizontally at about 85%move the scaled bars into position, and repeat the last step until there are enough spaces to go to 90.

Now you have to un-group the last copy you did and then just select the 4 thin lines to copy and move up, but this time don't scale anything, copy one more after that and then group the last ten lines together, now you can carry on copying and scaling.

Before I go any further with this explanation, does any of it make sense?
 
OK, did all that, then you just arc it? Did a very lame rough draft but that appears to be the solution unless I'm missing another refinement. Great job, Spruce - really appreciate the input.
dial2.jpg
 
If you make the lines a pattern brush by dragging the whole line into the brush panel, you can then stroke a circular path with it, then double click the pattern brush in the panel to fine tune the size and what not. Don't just arc it, it is not very precise, and you cant edit it quickly.

P.s. it is also an idea to note how big the gaps for the numbers are in relation to their position, so you can edit them before making it into a pattern brush.

Glad I was of some help.
 
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