The new guy with a Columbia basket case

[Adam_G]

Ok, I've added it to the Tips & Tricks section:

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 07#p166307

You can see the crank handle I plated in that thread, but here's some before and after photos of some other parts I did.

Some bolts that were corroded and pitted

Sanded bolt on left, polished bolt on right.

Nickel Plated Bolts. Some turned out better than others. Might redo some of these.

polished bronze crank escutcheon

plating the escutcheon

Plated and polished vs the polished unplated crank handle

on/off switch original condition

on/off switch plated, polished,

on/off switch plated, polished, assembled.

[cweastlick]

Adam, I just ran across your post. I have the same machine and in about the same condition. My biggest problem is that I don't have a motor. Do you have any "left over" parts you'd be willing to sell?

[Adam_G]

I've now completed the nickel plating how-to for those of you that haven't seen it yet.

I'll resume the progress I've made on my machine in the coming days.

[Adam_G]

After everything was nickel plated, it was finally time to put everything back together, starting with the new springs.

New springs ready to go into newly nickel plated barrels

It basically exploded out of that steel ring that binds it.

uncoiled spring

I thought I could coil the spring into the barrel and then apply the grease afterwards, my thinking being that I don't want to hold onto a super slippery spring under tension. After getting them both done I then discovered just how much tension these new springs had, because I couldn't separate the coils even a tiny bit to moosh some grease in there. So I had to pull them back out and start over, this time a friend helped apply the grease to the spring as I coiled it in. That way I was still holding onto a dry spring.

Springs in barrels with grease

I had a heck of a time putting the two barrels together because a couple of those stupid little screws would strip out the threads in the holes. Had to resort to the use of some teflon tape, which I'm not happy about.

Spring barrels together

Then the reassemble went pretty quick so I don't have any pictures of individual pieces going together, but here it is completed:

Assembled!

close up of the gears and stuff

The only modification I had to make was with the speed control screw knob. The leather pads on the governor are so worn out that when the switch is 'on' there isn't enough adjustment left to apply more friction to regulate the rpm.

speed control knob too short

So I found this little tiny nut that just fit the end of the adjustment screw and put it on there to get some extra length. This will have to do until I find some leather to replace those pads on the governor.

Tiny nut gets me a tiny bit more adjustement.

I tossed on the turntable and cranked it up to see if it would go...and it did!

Taking er' for a spin

If you want to see it working, I've uploaded a video to youtube:
https://youtu.be/KZ5jbzW2KvE


And that's pretty much it for the mechanical side of things; I'm now at the point of fixing up the wood box. I haven't done too much with that just yet, but I'll get on it.

[Victrolacollector]

Wow that is amazing! It looks like you have done a great job on preserving this nice machine. Thank you for sharing your progress.

[Adam_G]

Ok I'm back. I took a bit of a hiatus there to work on some other projects, which were arguably for the benefit of this restoration. Got me an old jointer that I figured would assist in the fabrication of some wood bits that were missing from my graphophone:

1960's Delta Rockwell 6" Jointer, but in pieces...and disrepair

Which then got reconditioned into this:

fixed!

I was about to start fixing some of the wood on the box when I noticed a difference in colors on the wood. I had already stripped all the finish off, so this was a bit puzzling. I went at it again with the finish stripper and sure enough there was still some old shellac in there. I spent this week re-stripping the wood and finally have it done. Here's a progress pic where I did just the left half:

left side is now cleaner than right

Now I get to the conundrum that I'd like some opinions on. The box lid's veneer top was a bit ruined when I got this machine, and some of it has broken off, some of it is missing, some of it is cracked, and the rest of it has some wrinkles. My issue is:
Do I try to fix the existing veneer? Or do I just replace one section of it? Or just do the whole thing?

I'd like to keep as much of the original wood as possible, so I think I could get the wrinkles out by slicing them with a knife, injecting some glue, and clamping it down. The broken pieces I can also glue back on, but then I still have patches that are missing. If I could find some old quarter sawn white oak, I would spend hours wittling it all to fit. But I don't have any aged oak that would match, which makes me think I could get away with just replacing the one end of the lid with new veneer and keeping the rest as the old stuff. The hard part is trying to age the new veneer to make it blend well with the old stuff.

I could just replace the whole thing, but the veneer I got would look wayyyyyyyy too clean compared to the rest of the box. Plus the veneer pieces aren't large enough to do the whole lid; I'd have to do a bunch of bookmatching and hope it looks ok.

What do you guys think?

I think I would just replace a strip on the left if I knew I could get the new strip to look as aged as the original veneer so that it would match...

Lid veneer as is

broken pieces

Broken pieces fit here. You can see how I just need a few more pieces to make it complete. This is the end I could just slice all the veneer off of and just put one strip of new stuff here

wrinkles in veneer

new veneers I have compared to the old veneer.

[Mr Grumpy]

Nice work on the jointer Adam, looks too good to use.

My opinion on the veneer work (if it were my machine) would be to re-veneer the entire surface but only
if I could find a really nice piece of quarter sawn veneer. Luckily I have an amazing wood supply house not
to far from me that stocks a great variety of veneer and the sales team are very helpful.

I'd choose this route because you've already stripped the machine down completely, so it will always be a restored
machine from this point forward. I'd also choose this route because I like to think I'm pretty good at matching finishes using a variety of dyes and stains so would probably not have a problem matching that new veneer to the rest of the case.

Good luck with it and be sure to share more progress please!

[Curt A]

I agree with Vince... I would re-veneer the entire top instead of piecing it or trying to iron out the wrinkles...

[phonogfp]

I agree with Vince and Curt. Re-veneer with quarter-sawn oak. (The veneer shown looks like straight oak.)

George P.

[Adam_G]

Ok, strip it down and redo it will be the course of action. Tricky part will be finding the veneer as the stuff I have shown is the result of visiting 4 different wood shops. The darker looking one is quarter sawn, but not a very good section in my opinion.

Thanks for the advice!

On a side note; I haven't been getting email notifications when I get PM's or replies to forum posts. I went through all my account settings and can't seem to find anything amiss that would prevent the notifications. Any ideas there?