Antique radio smoking, what could be the problem?
I recently aquired a 1934 Westinghouse model WR-29 radio. it had been sitting in a basement for quite a long while before i got to it. the first thing i did when i got it home was to plug it in and turn it on, after it heated up it began to smoke slightly, so i turned it off and left it. upon trying to think of what could be the matter, i realized that i hadn't bothered to clean all of the dust and debris off of the chassis, could the possible cause be the heat from the tubes burning dust and dirt off? if not what else? what ought i to look for when inspecting the chassis?
You’re right about dust and debris, the other usual suspect will be capacitors, particularly the large filter capacitors for the power supply.
Don’t know if your unit has any electroltic caps, which were rather dodgy in that era (some were rather dangerous in fact in that time frame), or paper-in-oil, which do not age well either, but you should contact an electronic guru for a re-cap, and a safety check for your power supply (many electronic devices of that era had a 50/50 chance of having a "Hot" chassis everytime you plugged them in, meaning you could expose yourself to lethal voltage just by touching any metal part that was connected to the chassis).