The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Congratulations are your "off brand" purchase.... and thank you for saving it! At a time when many of us are running out of room, it is certainly exciting to hear of another collector stepping up and saving one. Enjoy the restoration and the research! Those off brands have fun backgrounds....

Yesterday afternoon, when my shift was over at the factory, I tore down the Northome and started scraping the original finish off. It is a tinted or toned shellac finish that is pretty common on inexpensive furniture of the 1920-1940s period.

Having had bad experience with Citristrip I generally prefer to scrape or sand old finishes rather than attempt dissolving them. It allows me to get it right to the wood without having issues with gunk and buildup.

There are a few voids to fill left when it was dented. The composition "carving" on the front, made of pressed sawdust and adhesive, had the structural integrity of a stale biscuit and came off in six pieces. It will be restored separately from the case and applied later. "Repwood" is what I have seen this called on old radio cabinets, such as the abysmally cheap Crosleys of the 1930s. A nouveau-riche cousin of cardboard.
Off to the hardware store with one of the doors to find the correct stain colors. I'll be making a shellac finish.

Parts list so far:

shellac 1 can, orange
wood stain, medium brown with reddish tint
tack cloth
filler
vintage generic reproducer
crank handle for United motor
felt or baize to cover the turntable
lid pads
needles, 200
gasket material
oil & grease for motor

Taking shape!

Stripping is done by razor blade and elbow grease. Chemicals took too long and nearly ruined my "The Vokal" worse than the cream-colored coat of house paint on it. (LESSON LEARNED, not all British "assembled gramophones" are worth refinishing, and the paint might've been an improvement over the underlying wood on that one.) So after figuring, fighting, and getting it generally back in one piece the Northome project was done without CitriStrip.

I did use a homemade stripper in the inside of the lid. It's about half denatured alcohol, a quarter mineral spirits/Stoddard solvent, an eighth part of Minwax Furniture Refinisher and an eighth part paintbrush rinse. Does a fine job.

Legs aren't done yet; they get a relatively rough finish of dark stain (Minwax Jacobean in the stretcher spindle, Dark Walnut toned with Jacobean on the legs themselves) and heavy coats of shellac. This mirrors the original finish on them, made for durability and concealing a lesser grade of wood. I don't want it to look perfect, I want it to look convincingly antique, and part of that is (I think) using cheap finishes where appropriate.

Body color is Red Mahogany 2 costs, Dark Walnut 1 coat, various other adjustments as needed with these stains, and thinned down Zinsnner Bulls Eye amber shellac. It's not anything exquisite. Good enough for who it's for, far better than chalk paint and a couple bottles of Josh in the cabinet.

Sorry about the pictures , they should show right side up if you click on them.
While scraping the lid I rubbed off one of the felt lid bumpers and it was green, unusual for a machine with a dark brown turntable. I think it would look quite nice with a green turntable felt. My Panatrope has brownish tan, and I usually see brown on the machines of this era--Can someone enlighten me when green felts went out of fashion?

I am looking at acquiring a very simple reproducer for it. There was a large mica diaphragm lying inside the cabinet, but no reproducer. I think one of those 1930s generic jobs you see on portables would work, or some of the 1920s reproducers - probably need an Audak, but I don't know if I can get one that isn't suffering from potmetal decay.

Nice outcome! Great!

The dogwood applique that was in the front had come off in six pieces. I mentioned that. Anyway I gave it a solvent bath, scrubbed it with a toothbrush, and then reassembled it all on a piece of Eaton's Connoisseur typewriter paper from the sixties. Heavy cotton paper with a good grain. Soaked it in glue to float the pieces together, pressed them into place, and then when it was nearly dry I cut around the edges and now I can stick the whole thing on like a sticker.

A little wood stain will handle the white edges, and spray shellac will give it finish to blend into the surface of the cabinet.

I used Minwax Jacobean to do the legs along with some Dark Walnut to blend it into the cabinet sides like a gradient. This made a decent transition. Legs are supposed to get a heavy coat of varnish so I'll do that later.

Still looking for a crank handle, and am currently hunting a reproducer for it, but this thing is really taking shape. Now the main thing inside it is to refinish the inside of the lid and do some veneer repairs, as well as shoot some shellac on there.

I've accidentally poked a hole in the grill cloth, and lost the bushing from the crank escutcheon, but it's ok. These things happen! I'm still getting a good record player out of this.

There's possibly a missing spindle bearing in the motor but I may actually have a spare ¼" bearing from my bicycle. It's an ancient Raleigh and I have to replace bearings in it from time to time, so I think I somewhere have a bag of ¼" steel bearings. The spindle is too clunky up and down, and the grease is super soft and oily, so possibly someone has already fixed it before me. No telling. I'll find out later.

Whatever.


To properly research the machine I may need to hunt down an M.W. Savage catalog from around 1927 and hope I get lucky. Talking Machine World actually does have the United motor and Audak reproducer in it but no Northome machine. Fun fact, I did find one other part of the machine in the trade magazine -- the copper plated Rockford Hardware Co. hinges!

Anyway this is probably the quickest I've ever pushed through a restoration, but it's also a decent one. I'm having a good time overhauling this quirky little Consolette clone. Having fun and saving history - drinking coffee with my neighbor who got out the Stratocaster and played '90s rock - pretty decent weekend project, no?

Installed applique today after work and it looks good enough to me. That was six pieces of crumbles but with that cotton paper as a backing and some stain to tone everything back correctly it should last a nice long time now!

Very pleased with how this is going. I made an offer on a reproducer that will fit and hopefully I get a good deal; it's a cheaper one with a chrome mask and white back but black paint can help backdate it to the general styling of the 1920s.

The cheap reproducer isn't the original Audak. However, it'll be less prone to cracking, and of course I can put Exhibition tubing in the later style reproducers.

The lid needs a bit of help still but it's doing better.

The original felt is gone; I boiled it off with the coffeepot as mentioned previously, and now I see the hint of tint in the shreds of remaining fabric. It was originally dark green, so that's what we're going with.

Now to find a crank handle for an offbrand motor.

If you're looking for an Audak reproducer, drop me a line. I have this one as a spare:

@drh thank you for the offer! I had won a bid for one of these smaller late style generic reproducers because it's a smaller diameter. The short dimensions of the inside of the cabinet are causing some overhang when you put the tonearm near the spindle with a large Alba reproducer in place. Swap out for an Exhibition and it is lessened. So I went with a small reproducer like this which is similar to something from an inexpensive portable.

How do the Audak units sound? I have never heard one before. They look convincingly close to Victor hardware but I've not had a chance to get hold of a machine equipped with one. Awhile ago I thought about upgrading my XIV with one but didn't get anything in fixable condition.


Still out hunting for a ⅜” female threaded crank for this thing. Hopefully I can scrounge something that works.

They don't sound bad at all, in my experience. Not, perhaps, up to Orthophonic standards, but for a cheapie knockoff pretty respectable, I'd say. Mind you, I've not spent much time listening to one; I got this with a Victrola IX and promptly substituted an Exhibition after maybe one or two plays, and the last one I had got similarly short practical use.