Homemade Wax Cylinder Project: Request Input

[Victor A]

Alright everyone, I have the recipe! (Finally!)


After much experimentation (and a visit to Norman Bruderhofer's website (Shoutout to him)), this is the recipe which I have settled upon.

-16.5% Stearic Acid
-25% Beeswax
-35% Carnuba Wax
-2% Ozcerite (Or Paraffin)
-21.5% Ceresin

I am a little unclear on what amounts I need, but I think this is a good recipe to start. Any suggestions?

[Chuck]

That formula in my humble opinion will be a waste
of time. It is close to Edison's 1888 formula.
Those cylinders are soft and noisy.

-Stearic Acid saponified using hydrated aluminum solution
added portionwise per instructions outlined in complete
detail on my website.

-Ceresin 17%

I don't quite understand.

You have been told once already to go read my detailed
website, which tells EXACTLY what to do, and how to do it.

The reason I say these things is because I have spent
lots of time doing experiments with formulas such as
the one you just listed.

Trust me, they do not produce very good cylinders.
If you want good cylinders, the method has been
perfected and it is being used by myself, Shawn Borri,
an Paul Morris of the UK.

All 3 of us use slightly different versions of that same
basic method.

First you *must* learn how to make proper hydrated
aluminum solution.

Then, you *must* learn how to properly cook the
melted stearic, adding the hydrated aluminum
slowly in small portions.

It's all out there for you to learn from.

I suggest that you look up some of the terminology
so that you can understand what happens in the process.
Look up the words "Saponify" and "Saponification".
Then study up a bit on organic fatty acids.
Find out what a "base" is, opposed to an "acid".
Read up a little bit on soap making and then you'll start
forming a conceptual base to work from.

Yes, by all means you can melt up some stuff together
such as you listed, then cast it into a cylinder.

If you want better cylinders however, you *will* have to
learn to saponify stearic acid using a sodium hydroxide solution that has some aluminum in it.

There is a reason why Edison eventually hired chemist
Jonas Aylsworth. Mr. Aylsworth did approximately
1040 different experiments before coming up with
the saponified stearic with a trace of aluminum, and then
some ceresin added as tempering.

There is a reason why Edison's 1888 wax formula was
abandoned. He needed better cylinders.

So, the choice is yours. Do you want to spend your
time making known good cylinders, or ones which are
proven to be quite inferior? Pick one.

Sorry, that's just the way it is.
I can't change those facts.
You originally asked for input and it has been given.
(a few times now)

[Victor A]

Whoops! I misplaced the thing I wanted to post, and posted an old recipe that didn't work. I did end up trying the method on your website, and it worked well. Thank you Chuck, and I apologize for my error.

[Chuck]

...something does not quite add up here.

[hearsedriver]

What makes some of these blanks record louder than others? Ive tried a couple of different brands. Is it the hardness of the cylinder?

[Curt A]

...something does not quite add up here.

It makes me curious also....
#1 - Even if you followed Chuck's recipe, it's not an easy process to re-create, especially for someone who has never made a cylinder - how did it happen to work "great" and
#2 - if you are just experimenting with the recipe, where did you get a mold to pour the recipe into? An original cylinder mold is extremely rare and it wouldn't be easy or cheap to make a new one...
Just wondering....

[briankeith]

Why is my head spinning backwards over this post ??

[Chuck]

What makes some of these blanks record louder than others? Ive tried a couple of different brands. Is it the hardness of the cylinder?

Hearsedriver, I am glad that you asked that question!
It is a very good question and one which opens up
a huge subject.

First, let me explain that I have been working on
knowing the answer to this question for many, many
years now.

There are many factors involved, so I'll explain a few
of them as best as I can:

The loudness or quietness of a cylinder recording
has many things which influence it.

The trick when trying to compare different blanks
as far as overall loudness or quietness is that you
have to do the best you can to give them all the
same treatment as far as what recording is made on
each kind so that a fair comparison can be made.

Because, it is possible to holler your head off
at a quieter blank and make a loud recording just the
same as it is possible to talk softly to a louder
blank an get a soft and faint recording.

Temperature also has a whole heck of a lot to do
with how well or how poorly a blank records.

My experience has been that an ambient temperature
above 80 degrees F makes the best recordings.
Things continue to improve well up into the mid-90s,
then around 97 or so, things change.

Above about 97 degrees F and on up to 100 F and over
things deteriorate because you'll get echo-around
and lots of blasting.

Temperature and recording technique aside though,
the hardness or softness of a blank controls its
overall sensitivity to taking sound well.

There is a tradeoff between making a blank which is
hard enough to stand many, many playbacks, while still
being soft enough to cut well when being recorded upon.

A very soft blank can be made which records very well
but wears out quickly when played back.

Conversely, a very hard blank can be made which
can be played hundreds of times, but is very difficult
to make a nice loud robust recording upon.

What I always try to do is to strike a happy medium
of excellent recordability over a reasonable temperature
range from about 70 to 95 F, and also keep it hard
enough to be played back about 100 times at least, before
it starts sounding harsh.

I have found that all brands of stearic acid perform
slightly differently. I won't go into all of those
details now, but some stearics work great with 17.3%
added ceresin, and others work better with 18.5 %
and even 19% added ceresin.

When making blanks, if you change brands of stearic,
then you must try a standard amount of added ceresin
to see if it's correct. Then do bunch of recording
and playback tests on a blank made that way.

If it's too quiet, then add a few percent ceresin to
soften it.
If it's too loud and blasty and it does not stand up
well to many playbacks, then subtract a few percent ceresin to make it a bit harder.

These tests and adjustments can take days and even weeks
to gather meaningful data from.

But it all leads back to one thing:

The hardness of the blank.

Warmer temperatures make them much softer.
Cold temps. make them much harder.

More ceresin makes them softer. Less ceresin makes
them harder. Less aluminum makes them softer.
More aluminum makes them harder. The working range
for aluminum is from about .25% up to around .5%
by weight. That can be stretched on the low side
too. I do know for a fact that .19% aluminum by weight
works real well.

In addition to all of that mentioned so far, there's
the overall noise of the blank to consider as these
adjustments are made:

More ceresin tends to add more noise. Less aluminum
can get noisy. Too much aluminum can get noisy.
Too much or not enough saponification can get noisy.

For each tiny adjustment ever made to any wax formula,
no matter what it may be, it affects hardness, softness,
noise, overall recordability, and playback durability.
Often one or more of these end results oppose each
other. Add some tiny .2 or .3 % ceresin to tweak it
just a shade softer and boom, all of a sudden it's noisy
as heck! These non-linear results happen all the time
with the basic brown wax formula. It all hangs
upon a critical balance of roughly a dozen variables
any one of which if it is even off by some tiny fraction
of a percent can spoil the whole works!

It's non-linear.

Now that I've gone and talked about that, for sure
our friend Shawn Borri will very soon join this
thread. Shawn and I have both done lots of work
with all of these variables, and so many more that
you just don't EVEN want to know.....

I hope that kinda helps answer your question, Hearsedriver. But what it really does probably, is that
it answers one question and it brings up several more
things....

That is just the nature of Edison cylinder recording
blanks. If you really are wondering about how they
work, and you start asking and investigating, all of
a sudden there you are about 50 years later and still
asking questions then trying to find the answers.

Chuck

[hearsedriver]

Very interesting Chuck! You are always very thorough with your answers. I had no idea about the temperatures affect on recording. Im going to play with that and see what happens. Seems to be a balance with these blanks regarding sound quality and volume. I guess you give up a little of one to gain the other.

[Chuck]

A very popular technique for making cylinder recordings
is to pre-warm the blank using an incandescent lamp
bulb.

Some people get more elaborate with that than
others do. The easiest way is to put the blank on
the machine and let the machine run for a while as the
blank is being gently warmed by a 100 watt bulb in
an old gooseneck lamp fixture.

The lamp fixture is positioned so the bulb is a few
inches from the blank. The spinning of the blank on
the running machine assures that it gets warmed evenly.

Some guys then put a rubber band around the and of the
mandrel to prevent the warmed-up (and slightly larger)
blank from slipping off the mandrel during recording.

One fellow I know of uses a special box he puts several
blanks in, along with a lamp with a 100 watt bulb.

The thing to be careful about when doing this is to
make sure to loosen and remove the blank from the
mandrel very soon after the recording has been
completed. Because, if it stays on the mandrel and
it cools off, it can seize on the mandrel.

I personally have tried the lightbulb trick only a few
times. I've resorted to it very early in the summer
season when it's still cool outside, and in the late fall
when it starts cooling off again.

But mostly I just wait for a nice hot day and when it's
hot summer season, it gets sufficiently warm upstairs
at my old house to make some very loud and clear
recordings.

There are soon to be several of those voice recording
tests put up on my website for everyone to hear.
Soon, when ever my webmaster gets around to loading
them. The links are posted on the site in the
section labeled "recording tests". But so far they
are not "clickable" yet as he has not gotten around
to finishing that job.

I'll be sure to let this forum know when those
links start actually working.

Those tests may be useful to some people here
because most of them list the temperature it was
when the test was recorded.