The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Adam,
Here are some pics of my basket case Columbia AH. This is the one I need a motor, motor board, and case trim for. The previous owner drilled several holes in the case probably trying to retro fit another motor or something else. Any feedback you, or others, can add for suggestions I would really appreciate it. I don't know why my pictures post upside down. I've tried several times to fix it.

I have some 40 odd year old quarter sawn oak veneer you can have for your motor board if you want. I can send you some pictures of it. It's aged some, but not quite like your machine is of course, but it's got some nice flake to it, especially on one end. It's very long as it came from a piano factory that closed back in the 70's. Trying to soak old oak veneer off something and re-using it can really be problematic. But if you glue it back on with hot hide glue it will draw up tight and be fine. I've never tried gluing veneer sheets down with white glue, so I don't know how well that works. You have a small enough area though to work with there that the white glue probably isn't going to give you much trouble.

Adam... Just wondering what progress you have made and whether you completed the case...

Curt, thanks for the reminder. It's been a while since my last update so get ready for a heap of em.

At the time I was stuck on finding veneer for the lid, so I focused on other aspects that I could work on right then. After separating the box bottom and sides it then became easier to clean, so I gave it a once-over again and got it a little cleaner. While cleaning the box base I was thinking how great it would be to somehow get the gaps in the corners closer together or even closed. Realizing that all the woodwork is put together with hide glue, I decided I would attempt to re-liquefy the glue and squeeze the sides back together with clamps. I first tried using just a heat gun, and no dice. All it did was make that old hide glue even more dry and crusty. Then I remembered I had a little steamer and figured this would do the trick because it would apply heat and moisture. Since my test was successful I went full steam ahead on the task, and got the old glue to flow again and had to wiggle the side trim apart just a little bit so that I could apply some new glue, and then clamp it back together. Man, am I ever glad this stuff has a long working time or else I would've had a big mess on my hands (figuratively, even though the glue does make a mess of your hands). The downside to steam is that it goes everywhere and ends up loosening parts you didn't want to loosen, so many clamps were required to hold everything together. It's a project like this that makes you realize you don't have enough clamps... And was the mission a success? Kind of...I got the corners mostly closed, but some gaps still exist. I chalk this up to the wood being stored in a place with lots of temperature and moisture fluctuations and the wood just isn't the same shape it used to be and so it's impossible for it ever to line up perfectly again.

Forgot to mention I put some of that tite bond hide glue into a smaller bottle and had to heat the bottle with a heat gun to get it liquid enough to use. And a pic of the top side of the corners: The steam accidentally released a corner of the veneer on the top side, but this time instead of using the steamer to reflow the glue, I used a good ol' iron. And then many clamps were used to hold it down while the glue dries for 24 hours. I used a chunk of plastic directly on the surface to apply flat even pressue, and because I knew the glue wouldn't stick to it. And even though a bunch of the glue oozes out, it's easy to clean off afterwards with some warm water on a rag. No sanding necessary. Since I had the steamer out, I used it to remove the veneer from the top of the lid since the plan is to replace the whole thing. It was a struggle even with steam power and unfortunately I couldn't get it all off in one piece. Also a little surprised to find that the actual wood of the lid isn't oak. It's some other wood. Seems strange to me to make this entire box out of oak, and then just not use it for the lid. Perhaps too brittle for the weight of the motor?

I could see a bunch of little bits had broken off the veneered parts here and there. I could have just left it as is, but thought it would give me trouble down the road while sanding. I utilized my pile of old lid veneer to be used as parts for the missing bits.

Repair number 1. A long skinny piece had broken off the edge of the veneer on the base, as well as a few little pieces to the left of it. I sliced out a piece from my pile of scraps, as well as little nubs for those few spots: These were carefully glued down and clamped in the same manner as before: After a day of drying, the clamps are removed and the bits of veneer that stick out are trimmed off with an xacto knife: Repair is a little uneven as expected: But after a little sanding it seems pretty good. Now the wood color doesn't match perfectly, but I'll get to that later. And there was bunch of little areas to do like this:

Repair number 2. This was a larger chunk that was missing, but it feathered really then so I figured I could fix it like this: Repair number 3. The lid has it's fair share of missing pieces and at one corner the wood was separating.

Then the usual process of waiting 24 hours, then trimming to fit, and a bit of sanding: My plan for matching these patches with the surrounding wood is to use a custom stain. I'm not done mixing it yet, but I got it started and did some tests. It's basically made from white vinegar, steel wool, and rusty washers. Threw all that into a jar and let it sit for a week. This is the test piece. Various degrees of concentration for each spot, and beside them a did a little sanding to see how hard it is to remove. I'll need to water this down some more as it's way too dark. Then I'll add some tea to it to make it more orange. More tests to do...

Needed a small break from wood working, so I turned my attention towards to rubber feet I pulled off the bottom of the base. The old ones were flat, hard, and crumbly. I had acquired new ones, but some of them were also hard (not very rubbery/grippy) and didn't match the flat style the old ones had. I decided I could do better, so I assisted one of the old ones to crumble apart for inspection. It's made of the rubber, a bit of cloth, and a handmade nail. I want to reuse these nails as they fit the existing holes they made and reusing them would prevent to possibility of wrecking the wood by hammering in new ones.
I did some measuring, found some scrap rubber and some metal tubes. I sanded the ends of the tubes sharp: Then used to tube on the scrap rubber with a hammer to punch out new rubber discs: The old feet was a two tier construction, so I needed another punch to make the bigger rubber disc: The nails were a little rusty, so they took a bath in evaporust while I tried to clean the little cloth discs: Not done these yet because I want to hammer the nail thru the thin rubber disc and cloth into the base, then glue on the bigger disc. This will insure I get them lined up in the exact spot they came from. As of now, they look like this: They'll be a little taller than the old ones, but I think that'll be good for when I have to pick up the machine. There will be more room for your finger to grab ahold.

Now I'm back to the original issue of veneering the lid. I did find some quarter sawn white oak from a shop here in town that actually manufactures custom veneered plywood, so they had all kinds of veneer that they made. I grabbed 3 pieces and would have to bookmatch them as they're only 5" wide but my lid is 12". The problem I found after I got home where I had better lighting than a dark shop, was that the color variation of these 3 pieces was so bad that it would be very obvious that the lid did not have original veneer. I don't have a picture of this, but it was pretty bad. So I started to do some figuring... What I did was create 4 pieces from these 3 strips of veneer. Each piece I carefully chose for their color and for their grain pattern. Instead of bookmatching I'll make it look like one bit continuous piece. I can achieve this because I have a giant hole in the middle where the motor goes, so instead of 3 strips of veneer, I have 4 pieces taken from different spots. Looks like this: I don't have them tapped together properly yet; they're just sitting there. You can see my pencil lines of where the actual portions I need are. I'm planning on bleaching this a bit to even out some color variations that still exist as well. This I have to test on scrap pieces, but it seems that the bleaching process has to be done after most of the sanding is done, so I have to attach it to my lid first.

The new problem is how do I trim it after it's glued down? I won't be able to see the step-down in the lid that the motor sits in: A jig is the answer! Behold, an mdf block is placed in the center hole with pre-drilled holes in its' corners: After a bunch of templating and measuring, I have cut out a plexiglass template: This piece fits just inside the step-down in the lid. I used the holes in the mdf to drill up into the plexiglass and create matching holes: An example of how this will work. The veneer gets glued on, the mdf is inserted from the back and I drill holes thru the existing ones in the mdf through the veneer. Then I place the plexiglass on top and put a screw through the holes and tighten it all together. Now all I do is cut the veneer by tracing around the outside of the plexiglass with an exacto knife. I have high hopes that this will work. And that's about it for updates. I was going to work on the veneer this weekend but it's turning into more of a garage spring cleaning kind of weekend. Hopefully I'll have more regular updates from here on out.