The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Edisonsquirrel wrote:I have some BAs with splits on the end. Should I drill through both the celluloid and the plaster?

Rocky

You'll only have to make a straight hole through the celluloid. Thus, you will have to drill into the plaster partially. But you do not have to make any holes into the plaster as it is all about the celluloid's integrity.

Drilling a tiny hole in the celluloid works! I have a cylinder this technique was tried on several years ago & it has worked perfectly.

I also brought this idea up a couple of years ago, & some thought it would work & some didn't. At a show I attended, one person who was selling cylinders put superglue on the cracks. I asked about this, & he said it worked perfectly for him. Now I have to say, I didn't buy any of his cylinders on which he had done that so I don't know how it turned out in the long run. Your thoughts on this technique?

There are always workmen in town digging up the streets with noisy jackhammers. Maybe I should go over to them with a few split-end cylinders and ask them to drill the holes for me.



Rocky

I have had the Wax Amberols and late 2-minute cylinders crack on me as well---and I'm afraid to play them in the winter [120-year-old house that is NOT air-tight]. The Blue Amberols are also affected by high humidity in the summer, because the plaster-of-Paris swells then, too. The drilling method of saving them was something I heard of first in Eric Reiss' book on phonograph restoration. [By the way, he was a student back in the 70s, when Trebor Tichenor and I started teaching a course on the History of Ragtime at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.] Bob Ault

Bob,

It's funny you brought this thread back to "light".

The second copy I was given of Dressler's "Soft Shell Crab" last year ended up shattering on me right after it finished playing on my triumph a couple months ago. I was shattered over it, if you know what I mean. I took all the right steps, waited for it to warm up from the record room into my living room, put in on gently and played it with joy. Just after lifting the reproducer off the cylinder, I heard a snap and hesitated to look. Sure enough, it had split completely. Damberols. Phooey. From now on, I'm settling on the CD transfer I have of it!

Sean