The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

NashTwin8 wrote:Imagine your pot metal carburetor springing gasoline leaks onto a hot exhaust manifold!

My gosh! Why did I not realize that all my old carburetors had a familar look? Pot Metal, all of them! And all quite stable and reliable, except for a few gaskets and gunked-up needle-valves. Thanks for the clarification!

Back in the day the pot metal was fine.How were they to know that in 2014 we'd have problems with the *#*! stuff!!edisonplayer

I've told this story before when we discussed the accursed pot metal. As a piano technician I have to deal with the wretched stuff in the form of piano action frame brackets. Certain grands and uprights still use the metal and a run of grands from the early 1990's came with brackets made of a particular unstable brew. They began to expand after as little as five or six years. Since piano regulation is made or broken by a matter of millimetres, the steady expansion of the brackets make fine regulation impossible. The manufacturer, to their credit, offered aluminum replacements. But I have one client who ignored my warnings about his piano and now I can't pull the action out of his grand without snapping off hammers. So I for one would like to see pot metal consigned to the eternal flames.

Jim

Lenoirstreetguy wrote:So I for one would like to see pot metal consigned to the eternal flames.

Jim

....and those fellows who made the stuff!

I have a few pot metal reproducers that must have experienced their intergranular corrosion problems more than 20 years ago. They've not change one bit since I've had them. It is a crap-shoot, though as to which part crumbles and which does not.

Modern things are still made with white (pot) metal. The quality may be better than in the 1920s, but the strength of the metal is still sub-par.

I've tried to "weld" pot metal with low temp rods... it don't work.

It's not only 1920s pot metal that's gone to pot....there are many owners of Akai reel to reel tape machines (or those rebranded Roberts for the USA) from the 1960s and 1970s who have experienced swelling and cracking of two critical cams made of this garbage in the mechanisms of these machines, making operating them difficult or impossible until they are replaced. And nobody currently makes replica parts with which to replace them.

On the subject of pot metal..... I am wondering if my Model C and Model H reproducers are pot metal? I hope not, how would I tell?

Victrolacollector wrote:On the subject of pot metal..... I am wondering if my Model C and Model H reproducers are pot metal? I hope not, how would I tell?

I don't think so--at least the examples I have are not. Potmetal does rear its ugly head at Edison now and then though. The upper casting of my Model O Edison reproducer is made out of that junk. It is a little more stable than some PM castings, but still shows swelling and part of the rim has broken off. And there are the notorious potmetal bearings on some Edison machines.

The symptoms, which appear in varying degrees, tend to be swelling of the metal (causing things to bind and not fit as they were intended), surfaces that become irregular, and all too often cracking. In severe cases it can just crumble to bits.

Clay

Very late H reproducer tops were made of pot metal. I had an Edison Home 2/4 min. machine, and the H reproducer was stuck in the carriage. I sent it to Steve Medved to rebuild for me. He told me the pot metal was so swelled, that it couldn't be saved. He had a spare reproducer top and rebuilt my H reproducer.
Harvey Kravitz

I have seen some repro tops for Model O reproducers and I think they are still available.

Clay