Started on the Roberts Bestone

[Inigo]

Nice. Thanks for the report.

[Lah Ca]

Nice. Thanks for the report.

Most welcome.

My wife pointed out this morning that we missed the 100th anniversary of the machine's departure from Liverpool. It would have been last Saturday.

Oh well ... I showed the machine off to some dinner guests last night and spun a record or two. Maybe the 25th coincided with its arrival in North America--I don't know how long a trans-Atlantic crossing took in 1924. If not maybe it coincided with a social occasion in Miss G.E. Blackwell's Tourist 3rd Cabin state room.

[Lah Ca]

I had time to move this project forward a centimetre or two this afternoon.

I went out into another city to run various errands and to visit a hobby shop where I could get a semi-gloss acrylic clear coat in small bottles, Tamiya brand. Spray cans are available everywhere but the small bottles are a little bit hard to find in stock. As luck would have it, the store was having a 10% off sale, so I saved about $0.40 CDN on the little bottle.

Screenshot from 2024-06-21 16-47-57.png (306.72 KiB) Viewed 1154 times

I used the corner of a foam brush. The product is harder to use than paint because it is much less viscous. I managed to get a small dribble into the velvet inside the case, but the clear coat is water soluble, so I think a manged to clean it up fairly well.

The repair now looks better from a bit of a distance and slightly worse with close inspection--the clear coat shows imperfections in the repair more readily than the mat finish paint did. But no one ever looks at it that closely so overall, I am pleased with the outcome--the sheen of the repair and the light reflection from it more closely match those of the rexine. This is all a bit nit picky since nobody that I had ever shown the machine had noticed the repair before the application of the clear coat.

Pictures don't really show a lot but here we go anyways:

[Inigo]

Bah, Guy... It looks fantastic! It is a very well looking beauty. That chrome shine with the purple velour looks very elegant...

[Curt A]

I just read through your entire restoration process and found it to be extremely interesting. Your machine was definitely a worthwhile candidate and I like that you could see its potential, even though it may have looked too far gone. I like to see things brought back from the dead and you did an excellent job using some traditional and some very creative methods. Congratulations on a great restoration.

If you run into the problem again, of concerns for labels being damaged, scan them before you start and if they get damaged just print them with a laser printer. Coat the prints with orange shellac to age them, then cut them out. If you want them to look like celluloid dealer tags or instruction tags, as in a music box, just laminate them - it's hard to tell the difference..

[CharliePhono]

I'm anxious to hear it play.

[Lah Ca]

@Inigo and @Curt V

Thank you for your kind words.

@CharliePhono

At present, I do not have equipment to do justice to a recording. In my backlog of projects, there are a pair of Tandberg klientuchel TM6 microphones waiting to be converted to XLR, the lovely but highly unreliable Tandberg tape deck being long gone. While I do not really want to chop the ends off the mics, I also baulk at the cost of adaptors. I regularly cruise FB Marketplace and CL looking for a USB enabled two channel mixer, Behringer, Mackie, whatever. There have been ones in the sub $100 CDN range but located too far away for a crime of opportunity purchase. I have USB web cams that will provide adequate video. And as a LInux user, there are a lot of FOSS (free open source software) audio visual applications available to me. I am slowly working towards a goal here.

[Lah Ca]

While I was struggling with winding the machine yesterday (being largely of somewhat light weight aluminium and cardboard/leather-laminate construction and having slippery metal feet, there are challenges with winding), it suddenly dawned on me why the rexine and cardboard were so badly damaged down in front by the reproducer. I very consciously have to stop myself from forcing my hand down there to stabilise the machine while winding--it is the place the left hand just wants to go to.

[CarlosV]

While I was struggling with winding the machine yesterday (being largely of somewhat light weight aluminium and cardboard/leather-laminate construction and having slippery metal feet, there are challenges with winding), it suddenly dawned on me why the rexine and cardboard were so badly damaged down in front by the reproducer. I very consciously have to stop myself from forcing my hand down there to stabilise the machine while winding--it is the place the left hand just wants to go to.

Yes, the Bestone is not the most ergonomic of the machines ...

[Lah Ca]

While I was struggling with winding the machine yesterday (being largely of somewhat light weight aluminium and cardboard/leather-laminate construction and having slippery metal feet, there are challenges with winding), it suddenly dawned on me why the rexine and cardboard were so badly damaged down in front by the reproducer. I very consciously have to stop myself from forcing my hand down there to stabilise the machine while winding--it is the place the left hand just wants to go to.

Yes, the Bestone is not the most ergonomic of the machines ...

Yes. It is a delightfully eccentric and impractical machine. Visually stunning. And surprisingly good sounding once the reproducer is rebuilt and the rather clunky tone arm and support post interface is polished smooth and lubricated.

And it is all made a bit more awkward by the short throw crank required. It doesn't provide much of a lever for mechanical advantage, so more force is required to accomplish the same work. I shall have to start winding it with the top down, I think.

The absolute best position for winding I have found is with the lid closed, the top latched shut, and the machine up on its side. Totally impractical, yes. But highly effective. This is the position I use for social occasions where there is genuine interest in hearing the machine but attention spans are not likely to exceed the play of a single side.

As for the reproducer, I had thought to disassemble it again, replacing the diaphragm with a better grade one and the silicone pads on the needle bar springs with thinner natural gum ones, but the reproducer seems to be getting better with use. Is there a break-in period for a reproducer during which gaskets compress and more greatly assume their compressed form and mechanical things settle into their new alignments?