Victor Finishes - Dealer Display

[Jerry B.]

Here's an interesting Victor dealer display of the various cabinet finishes for that moment in Victrola production. It's interesting that of the twelve finishes, two are mahogany, two are walnut, and the remaining eight are oak. We often label a dark oak finish as "fumed oak", but not one of the darker oak finishes has that name. Was the fumed oak process a way of attaining all or most of the dark oak finishes?

Jerry B.

[phonogfp]

I've posted these images before, but here's a Fumed Oak Victrola XI in its original shipping crate - clearly marked "Fu. O. 11." Click twice on the picture of the playing compartment and you'll see the serial number matches that on the crate. I've shown the internal surfaces of this machine so people can draw their own conclusions.

George P.

[EarlH]

From what I've read about the oak finishes that were being used from the 1890's into the 20's and 30's in some cases, they were more interested in getting the color of the wood the way they wanted it with a chemical change in the wood instead of just using stain. The fuming process can make oak very dark and even almost black from what I've read but sometimes they had to wipe other things on the wood before it was fumed. If I remember correctly, they would often add more tannic acid to oak and some other woods to get the fuming process to make the wood darker. The really dark oak finishes (like Flemish oak) were usually done with the red oaks instead of white as the flake in the quarter sawn red oak was usually more predominate than it was in white oak. Plus, since it was going to be made so dark anyway it was seen as a waste of money to use white oak if it was going to be finished really dark. Almost all of the Flemish oak stain recipes that I've seen have some green in them to offset the reddish color of the wood. I'd have to dig through some of the old wood finishing books I have to get some of that stuff back in my head, but they really had a lot of odd ways of manipulating wood colors back then. And since oak was really popular in those years, they had all sorts of ways to deal with it.

Reds were very unstable and so was blue and some of the walnut stains call for the use of arsenic to give it "That beautiful tinge of red that is so admired. Of course the usual precautions should be observed" as it says in a 1904 book on wood finishing and house painting.

I've been refinishing an oak A-250 and am using the formula for "Golden Oak" that is in a 1912 book and it actually works really nicely. It's equal parts of asphaltum varnish, gold japan size and then it's thinned with turpentine. After that you fill the grain with either black or dark brown filler (I like dark brown better) and a thin coat of shellac followed by varnish, or lacquer. I think that the Golden Oak finish was usually more of a piano finish, and the Early English Oak was as well. I had an Early English Oak XVI a few years ago and it was definitely a polished piano finish. It still had the packing slip with it and that finish was mentioned. That finish had a lot of green in it as well.

The fuming process was a huge problem for factories that did much of it. The ammonia was hard on the equipment, and workers as well. Plus, they had to keep the lumber from each tree together as the different levels of tannic acid from one tree to the next might look alike until finish got on the wood and then it wouldn't match. Any flecks of glue, wax or nearly anything on the surface of the wood would make for white spots or streaks that would be hard to rectify. From what I've read about that process, I can understand why that finish kind of faded into the background after a few years. I do think that when you run across an oak machine that is dark and the color on the underside of the lid is the same as the outside of the cabinet, fuming was probably involved in at least part of the process. Or at least some chemical change was done to the wood as all of those stains have faded some by now.

The guys in those finishing departments put a lot of work into those finishes. Especially the piano finishes. The finishing schedule for those high gloss piano finishes was usually from 90 to 120 days. The wax and shellac finishes went on MUCH quicker.