The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Hello I am restoring an Edison Opera and have finished the machine and cabinet, which fortunately only needed cleaning and a little mechanical care. The horn on the other hand was severely damaged and poorly repaired in the past.

I took most of the panels apart scraped the glue off and rebuilt the horn (I hope to post this process on the forum some day in the future as I had to build a form for the horn). In this process I had to sand parts of the horn down so I will be sanding the entire horn to even out the finish.

QUESTION

What stain should be used to mimic the original look? The Machine is mahogany which is slightly faded.

What clear coat finish should be used? If shellac then Amber?, with or without wax?

Thank you

Bruce

My advice, for what it's worth on matching the stain, is to get a piece of mahogany from an old scrap machine, strip it the same way you did your horn and then place masking tape on the piece to divide it into small sections. Experiment with different commercially available stains until you find one that matches, or if you have a paint store with a scanner they may be able to scan the color of your cabinet and custom mix a matching stain. Once you have a match use clear shellac or lacquer for the finish. You can also test those results on the scrap wood before making a final determination... Also, try amber shellac, but it will definitely change the results. You might try amber shellac on the stripped wood with no stain, to see how that compares with your case. A clear wax won't be any problem...

The very first thing you do when working with Mahogany is pore filler.