Columbia BN now with fixed corner column

[jboger]

A while back I posted a request in the Yankee Trader for a corner column for a Columbia BN. None turned up, so back I don't know how long ago I used a rabbet plane and made a corner column from a piece of oak. I was at a loss how to match color. I know there are color wheels and color theory, etc, but I didn't feel like starting out on a steep learning curve. Anyway after what seems like a long time, I decided to buy some stain, Minwax Jacobean seemed a good match. Nope. Too dark. Then I bought Minwax red mahogany, tested it, it seemed too red. So with no real idea of what I was doing, I decided to put the red mahogany right over the Jacobean, followed by a few thin coats of a red amber shellac. The before and after pictures are appended. The pictures were taken under different lighting conditions. Seems OK.

I'm also looking at a Victor 0 I bought a few years ago. I gave up on it because I decided it would be an over-restored item, something that I'm not much interested. I'm revisiting that too.

[Phono-Phan]

Nice Job!! A very good color match.

[jboger]

Thanks. It was more luck than anything else. I put the red mahogany stain on top of the Jacobean because I thought the red mahogany a little too red and that the Jacobean might help. It seems to.

[bob27556]

A very nice job! I've found with Edison cylinder machines a 50/50 mix of Minwax Dark Walnut and Red Oak gets close to the color needed. Test on a piece of scrap and adjust the mix as needed. I've yet to try to match the stain on a Columbia machine but my BKT is pretty ugly and might be my first attempt.

[Phonofreak]

Great job!!! It marches the rest of the finish, perfectly. It looks like an original 110 year old part.
Harvey Kravitz,

[jboger]

Thanks to all for the kind words. It still needs some of that beaded moulding around the top. And Columbia horns are a perennial problem. They are not difficult to find, just difficult to find with the original paint mostly in tact. There's been a nice black one for sale on eBay for some time. I can understand why the seller is trying to get his price.. But I'll continue to hold out until something comes along. A big searchlight horn hit the block at a local auction today, so the stuff is still out there.

[VanEpsFan1914]

I love the restoration you're doing on that column. It's very pretty and looks like it's a hundred years old. My BN is a later model and was really badly restored back in the eighties or nineties, so I am having to do more a remanufacture than a restoration.

That horn though...I gleaned some from excerpts of the Compleat Talking Machine, and came up with this.

Originally they were plated with tin or nickel or something shiny like that, and then clearcoated with a mixture of dye and shellac.

I am planning to do my horn with silver Rub-N-Buff, and then mix some aniline dye and shellac to make the paint. Then do gold paint on the rim and on the ribs and then clearcoat with spray shellac. That's not 100% original but it is the best I can do without converting half the shed into a plater's works.

Your BN looks really nice, and the beaded trim is a nice first-year touch of class! I hope mine will look that good too.