Time for a new update!
With a short week end in sight I decided to attack the challenge of making a replacement of the famous mandrel spur gear.
I desoldered it from the mandrel pulley and measured it, found the suitable material and even made the cutter with the correct profile of the teeth.
I cut the 43 teeth... Its a tedious job that requires all your attention during hours because one single step done wrong and you destroy the gear.
And it was a disaster.
Not because of the gear that I made but because of the other two gears (the big ones) that I thought that I saved them gently filing the damaged teeth. When I tried them, they were unacceptable NOISY! I would never be happy with such a noisy phonograph. So, with my level of frustration at its peak I decided to search for another solution. As I said before, this gears have no equivalent to nowadays standards but I've found that the metric module 0,3 is quite close. I've found for peanuts some 100 and 50 teeth gears that are almost the same diameter. I will have to make a bushing for one of them and turn the shaft to the correct diameter on the other two and I think the difference between the 43 vs 50 and 86 vs 100 teeth will not be very visible.
I have no pictures of the gear I made because I totally forgot to take them in the middle of my frustration.
So to build some motivation again I decided to totally change of matter and spend some time rebuilding the lid. I made a Small jig and attached it to the router and 20 minutes later I had some very nice walnut profiled strips to the exact shape as the old ones.
I also made a quick jig to straighten the deformed part of the top of the lid. It required several cycles of moisturizing and gentle heat under pressure till it regained its original shape.
Next weekend I will start testing how to color match the new wood. I can tint the wood or tint the lacker. I already have prepared some shellac dissolved in alcohol to do the tests.
Stay tuned!