Wooden mandrel bearing

[tomb]

I was working on a Edison standard and could not get it to play well. It had drag. I finally checked the mandrel bearing on it and found out it was made of wood. I have found one a year ago that was plastic. That onw worked a little better. I replaced the bearing and the phonograph works great. This one had the bad bearing and a bad spring. He might have over tightened it to compensate for the drag. Tom B

[Jerry B.]

That's interesting. Early collectors had a much more difficult time securing replacement parts compared to modern collectors. Replacement rear mount Victor elbows are a good example. The first replacements were made from real plumbing pieces and sold by Carl Frick. I remember first generation collectors that referred to machines with too many Frick parts as "Frick-O-Phones." Next came the cast aluminum elbows and collectors were delighted to have them available. Now Sitko sells an accurate replica elbow.

I suspect your wooden mandrel bearing was fabricated when Edison machines were just becoming an item of interest to early collectors. I imagine your Model D Standard was a prized possession from its sale date and used for entertainment for ten to fifteen years. If true, that means it was packed up to the attic in the early twenties where it sat for the next forty years or more. When that machine was rescued from that attic in the sixties where would you go for repair parts? Edison dealers were not an option. There was not a network of collectors to lean on for advice. Anything like the internet was too wild a concept even for the most bizarre science fiction movies. Unless you were resourceful both you and your mandrel were stuck. We occasionally see mandrels from Model D machines with channel lock teeth mark damage. Today we look at that type of damage with horror. When those channel locks were applied that machine had only marginal value. Modern repairmen or collectors have many resources to help avoid errors.

Jerry Blais

[Phonofreak]

I hope you didn't toss out the wooden bearing. I would put it in a baggie and label it. It is an interesting piece of early phonograph collecting history.
Harvey Kravitz

[tomb]

I am saving the bearing and putting it in the machine with this string for future owners to see. I think if I put some grease in the bearing it might have worked which is what they may have done.. People were very resourceful when they need some repair parts or else the machines were toast and thrown out. I wonder how many machines have been thrown out due to one part failure because of no replacement parts? I understand a lot of machines were turned into scrap during W.W.2 because they needed metal for the war... Tom B