The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I am in process of designing and constructing a home made cylinder shaver.
Does anyone know the correct Edison specs for cylinder RPM and cutter lead speed?

Any help will be appreciated.

It is really unnecessary to attempt to reinvent the
wheel when it comes to having a cylinder shaver.

The hard work of designing, testing, and thoroughly
working all of the bugs out of a shaving machine
has already been done for you many, many years ago.

By far the easiest, simplest, least expensive,
least labor-intensive solution for this dilemma is
to start scouring ebay, craigslist, and all other
possible sources to locate and purchase an Ediphone
or a Dictaphone shaver.

They are out there. Lots of them. One must simply
start searching and be patient.

Thank you for the suggestion.
I am aware of the Ediphone and Voicewriters available on eBay, etc., but I already have modified a Home B Bedplate with an Ediphone electric motor for recording and reproducing, and added a variable speed motor to be used for shaving on the same bedplate, to have the convenience of all 3 processes in one piece of equipment.
All I need now are the dynamic specs for cylinder RPM and cutter lead (threads/inch).
If these specs are known, or can be determined from an existing shaver, I would appreciate the info.

To get the lead you have to count the turns
of the mandrel and equate that to the distance
that the carriage travels.

One thing I can say from experience is that the finer
the feed (i.e. the slower the carriage travels), the
better the shaving job will be. That does, of course
reach an end point where if it is going too slowly
across the length of the mandrel, it takes forever
to shave a cylinder.

I'd say that since you are designing this unit
from scratch, why not set it up to have a variable
feed, and also a variable speed? Just make those
independent of each other, and then any combination
can be selected.

That way, it can be adjusted to give the best results.

Generally, the faster the blank is spinning, the
better the shaving job will be. That has its limitations in that if too high RPM is used, the
blank will explode off the mandrel.

About 1000 RPM shaves nicely on my Dictaphone model 7
shaving machine.

Not sure about the feed, but it is a very fine
thread pitch on the feedscrew.

Best to probably round up some Dictaphone parts
or better yet a whole machine and use that instead
of having to "reinvent the wheel".

Thank you for your reply. I have set up a variable speed motor which drives the original Home B lead screw and mandrel. I agree that about 1000 rpm seems to be good cutting speed, and with 100 pitch feed screw, this equates to .16 in/sec,. which seems too fast. Separating the screw from the mandrel would be too much trouble, but I'm thinking converting to 2/4 gearing and running the screw half speed might work well.

By the way, the reason I'm going to "all this trouble" is for the convenience of having the Shaver, Recorder, and Reproducer all on one machine. Besides, it's fun!

Cheers, Ron

Let me suggest you also create a little vacuum cleaner attachment to suck away the shavings as they are created. It can get super messy super fast, especially at the high RPM you mention, and the convenience you mention could thus be negated pretty effectively!

After shaving the 1st Voicewriter black Wax Cylinder, I realized some sort of swarf collector was needed. I mounted a wide mouth attachment from a small Dust Devil portable Vacuum which sucks up most of it, and plan to make some mods to improve collection.

As I said, this is fun!

As I have already mentioned multiple times
here already.....all of this work has been done
for you long, long ago at large factories that made
many millions of shaving machines for dictation
cylinders. These machines have the speed and feed
all worked out and maximized for best results.

Some of these machines had vacuum attachments
to suck up the wax shavings.

The more common method was for it to be equipped with
a chip-chute which takes in the stream of swarf
and directs it down into the swarf drawer.

I've rounded up several of these shaving machines.
That way, if one fails somehow, or needs adjustment,
all I need to do is roll out a different one, plug
it in, turn it on, and continue working.

If I had to build my own shaver from scratch, I'd
still be working on that instead of producing
brown wax blanks.

The shaver is a tool.
What ever works for you is best.

I finally got time to try shaving some cylinders on my Columbia Model S shaver.The machine runs well and the cutter seems to look good under magnification. Attached is a photo of a new cylinder I tried to smooth out. After several shaves, there still seems to be faint grooves around it. Is this as good as it gets?

I see the groves your talking about. I would think it the sapphire cutter. Here’s a picture of some of my Shaver Cylinders. Thefinish is like glass.

Rich Gordon