Amberolas

[FloridaClay]

On more little piece of the puzzle. Look for the Dog has a section in the back that reprints a series of articles that ran in The Voice of the Victor from 1915 to 1917 describing the author's visit to the Victor factory in some detail. The installments from Jan and Feb 1917 concern the finishing process. The piece of our current puzzle here is that at least at that time at Victor the fumed and weathered oak finishes were waxed finishes. The others involved staining, filling, several coats of shellac, and a final finish with varnish. There is also paragraph or so on the fuming process.

So, at least for Victrolas made before the advent of lacquer finishes, there is one more clue as to what is golden oak and what is fumed in addition to color/tone. If it has a shellac/varnish finish it is unlikely that it's fumed.

As an aside, the whole series is fascinating to read.

One more curious Look for the Dog bit. There are a couple of pages in the back that reprint instructions to dealers on how to do cabinet touch up. The golden oak section mentions, among other things, that the "[e]dges of Golden Oak my be touched up with Vandyke Brown and Shellac solution." There are also instructions for polishing with 3 parts turpentine and 1 part paraffin rubbing oil. The section on fumed oak relates, part, that "[t]his finish is the most difficult to repair of all the art finishes, as it is produced by chemical action. If scratched or bruised to the extent of white wood showing, and has to be refinished, the instrument had better be returned to the factory for repairs. . . ."

Clay

[PeterF]

It's probably not wise to make any assumptions about how dark "fumed oak" is or was or should be, because the original technique had intentionally variable results. The primary purpose of using this method was to darken the shade of oak without raising the grain, as happens with liquid stains, as well as to bring out the effect sometimes called "tiger striped" on quarter-sawn oak. The longer you expose the oak to the ammonia, the darker it gets. So technically there can be light fumed and medium fumed and dark fumed finishes. Fumed is more about grain and highlights than shade, in one sense.

You can do this yourself. Suspend the oak piece in a airtight tent made from a large black plastic trash bag, and place tin pie plates full of strong ammonia in the bottom of the tent. Put this outside on a warm day, in sunlight, sealed. The heat helps vaporize the ammonia. Takes time but it works.

The technique was supposedly discovered accidentally by seeing the effects of ammonia fumes from horse urine on oak stored in barns, but this is apocryphal.

Almost all original quartered oak pieces I've seen by Gus Stickley, as well as other contemporary furniture makers, have uniformly dark finishes. Contemporary catalogs by him and others sometimes reference multiple available finishes for oak, and most usually when there are only two, the choices are fumed or golden. Golden is light, so that leaves fumed for dark.

As for light exposure darkening finishes, in my own experience direct light fades and lightens finishes rather than darkening them. I'm guessing the rug effect on floors might be more about air exposure and oxidation. But in any case, it seems hard to think that a phonograph cabinet would darken evenly from sun/light exposure...but air might do that.

Terminology is so often the source of confusion. Edison's use of the term "oxidized bronze" in catalogs confuses many, since technically there's no bronze involved. So some call that copper-patterned-and-black finish oxidized copper. I'm still looking for a contemporary light fixture catalog with such finishes, just to see what others may have called it.

[FloridaClay]

. . .But in any case, it seems hard to think that a phonograph cabinet would darken evenly from sun/light exposure...but air might do that." . . . .

That makes great good sense. The shellac finished machines I have that have darkened have generally darkened fairly uniformly on exposed exposed surfaces. I expect the darkest are those that have spent a lot of time in attics, barns, sheds, etc. where they endured widely fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels at different seasons of the year, and even day-to-day. (Think of the sun beating down on tin roofs in the day and cooling at night.)

Having now had my curiosity considerably aroused by this this thread, I will try to see if there are some good papers somewhere on the effects of time, temperature, light and humidity on the product when I get some time to do it. They have got to be out there somewhere.

Clay

[A Ford 1]

Hi again,
UV light will cause light unstained oak finished with shellac or varnish to darken on the other hand lacquer, as in my Steinway piano that was refinished some 20 years ago, will get very fine crazing so fine it is hard to detect but results in the finish looking lighter due to a yellow to orange cast because of the refection of light from the subsurface crazing which hides the stain. Dark stains will lighten with UV exposure. Ammonia gas, dog or other urine, water plus iron and many other chemically active agents will cause black or gray staining of oak. Hydrogen peroxide will bleach wood. Oxalic acid applied to dog urine stained oak will remove the surface stain but the stain some times returns in humid conditions. Every year that I striped and re-varnished my teak trim on my sail boat it started light but darkened with age until adhesion to the wood was compromised at seams then they became light. If you do not put finish on teak it takes on a gray-white patina due to water and sun and this is the method of least work for many sailors.
Allen

[FloridaClay]

A quick and dirty preliminary check indicates that heat is probably the culprit, with damage to shellac setting in around 120 degrees. I expect temperatures in attics and many outbuildings can easily exceed that in the summer.

Clay

[FloridaClay]

[this was a duplicate]

[A Ford 1]

Hi,
Sun exposed surfaces heat up as well even in and air conditioned house a floor or phonograph finished surface can be at or above 120 degrees Fahrenheit the darker the surface the higher the temperature. non-shinny surfaces will be of higher temperature because more light is transmitted to the wood shinny surfaces will be cooler because more light is reflected from shinny surfaces, therefore, less light is transmitted to the wood. Incident light equals that reflected plus that transmitted.
Allen

[RefSeries]

To add to the debate my B80 has a wood grained horn and what looks like an original tan cloth behind the grille.

Keith

[Lucius1958]

To add to the debate my B80 has a wood grained horn and what looks like an original tan cloth behind the grille.

Keith

That's what I found on my A80 (small traces of cloth, anyway).

Bill