Repro record album pulls

[Tpapp54321]

For a while I've been looking for reasonably priced albums to put in my Victor L-door XVI with no luck. So recently Ive decided to put together some boxes that look like the original lettered albums on the front but are just boxes to hold records in the inside. What I need to do this is some of the pulls that fit on the front, after some searching I found these: http://www.leevalley.com/us/hardware/pa ... 3521,43559 . Are these close to the size of the originals and do you guys think they look similar enough?
Thanks,
-Tom

[Cody K]

Tom, the rings on my original boxes measure just a little over one and an eighth inches in diameter. The smallest of the ones your vendor has for sale translate to around one and a third inches, so while they're a touch on the large side, I think they'd probably look fine. The bosses on the originals are a little wider than on the new ones, but just the same, I'd call the ones you've found pretty darn close, and the slightly aged look of the brass is good too. I'd say go for it.

Love to see some pics of how your boxes turn out -- good luck!

[EarlH]

I think those look fine. There are some variations on those on the old albums anyway. How many people are going to come over that would know that at a glance anyway? I've always thought most of the boxes and albums are hard on the records, unless you are really careful about how you handle them. It's too bad, but I don't remember any auctioneer selling the records (and albums) with the machines they belonged in when I was a kid and that stuff was coming out of the houses. I probably wouldn't have wanted it that way anyway as I would always have been more interested in getting more records, than getting another machine I really didn't need and my folks wouldn't want to make room for....

[Henry]

Zamac: now there's a word I haven't seen in many years. IIRC, this is the same stuff that was used to make commercial castings in model railroad work. I think it was some kind of zinc alloy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamak . As the wiki says, there was indeed a problem with some of the earlier stuff, resulting from impurities in the zinc. Let's hope that's been taken care of with today's materials!

New Jersey had zinc mines and smelters in this region (e. PA, north-central Jersey). There is a very interesting mine tour described here: http://sterlinghillminingmuseum.org/ . Something to do once the snow melts!