Big Bird...

[EarlH]

I had a friend of mine pick this up down in Kansas City awhile back and you can see why he called it "Big Bird" as soon as he saw it in person. 45 years ago they decided to strip it and then give it the tune up with oil based antique yellow as they were doing back then. I don't see the yellow very often, but I've seen quite a few avocado and brown pieces around here. Even a blue player piano awhile back. Anyway, I couldn't get the yellow paint out of the grain and unfortunately for what these are selling for now you really can't put $5,000 worth of work into them and expect to get much more than $400 out of one. At least not around here in Iowa. Some of the gold plating is pretty worn on this one as well, but they did take all the hardware off it when they made it beautiful. Makes me wonder if they were hippies in those days, but now they are retiring and moving to a smaller house. They lost the horn along the way as well when it seemed like it was a good place to put the stereo, but at least they kept the motor and everything else.

I think I have a cast iron elbow around here and my brother said he would help me cut out the wood part of the horn. I have some birdseye maple and I might make it out of that for the heck of it. I got the finish all rubbed out & waxed today and have it all back together except for the motor. I'll have to clean that up and service it before I put it back in the cabinet. These poor things are just falling out of the sky it seems and people just don't want them anymore. Hopefully this one will survive now and I really think it looks pretty good in black. Much better than I expected it would and everyone else that's seen it has said pretty much the same thing. I don't have the room to keep it and at least this way it's not quite as jarring as the yellow was. It will do a better job of showing dust now. Haha!

[Lucius1958]

The final result looks fairly decent: although it might be nice to paint the interior (or at least parts of it) red or blue, as on the special "chinoiserie" lacquered cabinets.... perhaps, if someone could find a talented enough artist, they could reproduce the paintings typical to those models.

Of course, I do not know whether this finish was available in 1912; and I certainly would not advocate anyone trying to pass off a repainted machine as original. But it would be pretty spectacular...

Bill

[FloridaClay]

Those "antiquing kits" were all the rage for a year or two in the 60s. I remember using one on an old rocking chair when I was a kid. It turned out the same as the yellowish finish on the L-door. And unfortunately those kits are still widely available.

Considering where you started, your project turned out well. You might be able to pick up a horn for it from George Vollema.

Clay

[EarlH]

It had some pretty good sized dents under the lid and one one side also, but that yellow paint just didn't want to come up out of the grain. They were still using a lot of lead in those days and that might have been part of the reason it didn't want to come loose. It sounded like someone else started to strip it and then didn't know what to do next, and then the people I got it from bought it and modernized it. It's a wonder they didn't put daisies or sunflowers on it! You could buy these things pretty cheap back in the 60's. And there is sure a lot of downward pressure on prices for this stuff these days as well or there wouldn't be so many of them getting turned into wine cabinets and "re-purposed" into other things before getting hauled to the burn pile...

I had thought about doing the Chinese red under the lid, but Behlen makes the black piano lacquer and I would have to get furniture lacquer tinted the red color and then I'd have another $50-$75 into the thing. I have a pretty good friend out in Utah that could do the Chinese painting on the sides if he had some decent pictures to go by, but again, it's all ends up being time and money and you know how that goes.

I kind of did it just for the heck of it, and it's really not bad looking this way. There was no way to really ebonize it either as the black stain wouldn't have covered the yellow in the grain. It's just the way it goes with some of these projects and maybe I should have just parted it out, but that kind of seemed a shame as well. Plus, the plating on the tone arm was pretty much polished off and so was the plating on most of the stuff under the lid. The knobs and hinges cleaned up ok, but they really aren't anything to brag about either and the reproducer was long gone as well. My Dad would have said "She was a tired old girl". It was a quick and easy thing to do and now I can get back to the other three machines I want to finish up on this summer.

[downsouth]

I have a horn for your L Door if you are interested.

Regards, Wes

[Bruce]

I think you did a nice job and if you can find a young couple who is interested in having a cool conversation piece it will find a home for a long time - especially if you return it to working order for the new owner.

Bruce

[Oceangoer1]

I really like the black! It shows off the gold hardware and makes the decal a real feature. Normally, covering in black paint wouldn't be at the top of my list. BUT, that horrible yellow paint would be a nightmare to remove. Also, like some people have pointed out, they actually used black on some of the special order ones. So its not entirely out of place

I'll jump on the Oriental motif train. That would look really cool.

[EarlH]

When I was a kid, there was a woman in town that had an Ivory colored Victrola. A friend of mine here in town has the albums from that machine. I'm almost positive that one was an L-door machine, but I would have to ask Terry to make sure and it's been a long time since I talked to him about it. She tried to sell it to my Dad and she wanted $10 for it and Dad offered her $8 and that was as far as it went. It must have been about 1972 or '73 because we moved in 1974 and I know it was before that. Anyway, I wouldn't care for that color on one of those things. Dad thought she painted it, but she made a point of showing the decal under the lid and that it was over the white paint and that's about all I really remember about the thing, other than I really thought it was kind of ugly. She was also a chain smoker, along with her husband, or whoever the man was that was in the house with her. They have been dead for year now and Terry doesn't know what became of that machine. It seems like Victor did offer Ivory and black both, but I don't know when and I'm sure they would do about anything if you were willing to pay for it.

The only one of those machines I've ever seen that had the Oriental painting on it was an XI a long time ago. That was in an antique store and they wanted around $500 for it in those days and I thought they were nuts at the time. But that also was a long time ago and the thing wasn't in very good shape. It looks MUCH better than it did and I really don't mind it being black at all. The mahogany was nothing special in this one, and it was sure a lot easier to fill all the big dents with something instead of trying to get them all leveled up with stick shellac. Those Flemish oak Victrolas are almost as black as this one is unless they have faded badly.

Fumed oak won't change much when you compare the inside to the outside. But that is a difficult finish to do as the wood has to be extremely clean for the fuming to go on evenly and not leave white spots from glue, dirty hands, et. It's also kind of a dangerous way to manipulate the wood to darken it as well. I have an old book on wood finishing and it says how to fume the woodwork in a house. The author says to tie a stout rope to a young man and have him open the jars all over the house and have them in large galvanized buckets in case the contents should spill. And to do the upstairs first in case the young man should become overwhelmed and must be pulled out of the house. He will appreciate not having to be dragged down the steps!

And even though that finish was offered, I don't think it was pushed much.

[edisonplayer]

My new Victrola IV had mahogany stain put over the oak,but no varnish.It would've been worse if it was painted!edisonplayer