The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

STARR-OLA wrote:That is a big spring,im thinking thats where all the crazy spring wives tales came from.i wont list them till you have them back in there nests.

I repacked all three yesterday. That's why my forearms were shot. Getting them out was tough enough, but so was cleaning them because of the sheer surface area. It took a lot of scrubbing and polishing to get them smooth. Then repacking them and greasing a few feet at a time while doing so was exhausting. I don't use a vise to hold the barrel when packing springs. I prefer to hold the barrel in one hand and wind the spring with the other.

I will measure the thickness of the spring tomorrow. Will be interesting to compare it's thickness to a spring from a Triton motor. Here is one of the springs prior to removal. The arrow points to a good portion that shows the thickness. I will measure with a micrometer tomorrow.

I never worked on it but the Sonora Grand I had with the record play dial showed something like 12 sides of play on the gauge.. that would have had to been a very long spring I would guess?

Larry

I forgot about the spring spec page in Frow. Thanks for the reminder. BTW: a complete Triton spring barrel assembly, ready to install weighs 11+ pounds!
SunnyPhono, I don't know how you repack springs like that. I had to build a fixture to clamp my Triumph barrels in my vice so I could hold on to the things. Yours looks like a cast iron barrel too, which adds a lot of weight.

Jim

If you have ever wondered where these old huge mainsprings end up, they have found a home in the professional cycling circles confirming what George P and I have known all along, cycling and phonographs just seem to go together

I am not sure what the barrel assembly weighs. It's sitting next to the rest of the motor ready to be installed and I will weigh it before doing so just for curiosity sake. I know I weighed the entire machine before removing the motor and it weighs almost 70 lbs!

A fixture to hold the barrel in this case would have probably been easy on my forearms for sure. I just found that I have a better ability to manipulate the spring properly if I physically hold the barrel.

Brad wrote:If you have ever wondered where these old huge mainsprings end up, they have found a home in the professional cycling circles confirming what George P and I have known all along, cycling and phonographs just seem to go together

Haha! Great picture!

SonnyPhono wrote:

Brad wrote:If you have ever wondered where these old huge mainsprings end up, they have found a home in the professional cycling circles confirming what George P and I have known all along, cycling and phonographs just seem to go together

Haha! Great picture!

If a phonograph collector fails a drug test, do they take away his records?
(I'm studying for my urine test by drinking a beer)

You won't have any problem filling that little cup they give you!

Jim

I had a chance to check the thickness of the springs as well as the weight of the barrel assembly for reference. The springs are .0275" thick and the barrel assembly with springs weighed just over 13 lbs! I am still finishing the motor and will try to post a thread showing the motor as well as the rest of the machine when finished for future reference on the forum.

the biggest phono spring i've seen was on a multiphone we had to use a machine winder to get it out and the f#$%^&in nut broke!!
the biggest main spring in general goes to a polyphon upright disc changer music box this thing explode out of its barrel shoot foreward miss my friends face and crash through an oak door im sure that if my friend was in the way it would have taken his head off!!
this spring was about 2 milimeters thick and 5 inches wide!! (i don't know the measurement in inches for millimeters)it went right through a door made of oak of 2 inches thick!! but the winner is the spring used in a machine for weighing metal in a scrapyard
when this method was digitized they took the apparatus out the spring pushing up on the weighing plate was about 3 inches thick 100 inches wide!! now thats a biiiig coil!!!

greetings
tino