Cleaning cylinders

[estott]

I've just acquired a fairly large lot of 2 minute cylinders, mostly mildewed. Some of them look terrible (white and crusty) but still play surprisingly well. I know the mildew is there to stay but is there a procedure to clean the surface a bit? I've found that a bit of extremely fine steel wool will make the end titles readable but this is obviously NOT for the playing grooves.

[edisonphonoworks]

I have been surprised by how some very horrible looking cylinders will clean up (This information is for slighly pitted cylinders, ones that cleaning would make an improvment on, not for non moldy clean cylinders, Good clean cylinders should be brushed with a camel hair brush only, nothing else should touch the grooves, of nice cylinders!) Do not use a regular paint brush (nylon, badger hair ect.) it will scratch the records, high end art supply stores have the camel hair brushes.

Now for those records you think would never play.

I have used distilled water and a few drops of dawn, using a piece of velvet, scrubbing the grooves, (Labtone or a bar glass washing agent is the best.) I scrub in the direction of the grooves, and then rinse off in room temperature distilled water, and then wipe off with lint free cotton towel. I sometimes take these records after they are cleaned and use a cotton ball and polish them on an Ediphone shaver (not shaving them but giving them a little shine, about 5 seconds is all that is needed, for comparison, make a before and after recording of these. I really have been surpised by the results.

[JohnM]

Is it really a mold/mildew on the cylinders, or is it a chemical efflorescence caused by high humidity -- or both?

[edisonphonoworks]

The Stearic Acid used for making original wax cylinders is derived from bovine fat. Bovine fat stearic contains about 5% Olaic acid. Edison used Mitchel brand stearic, which Edison's Chemist Jonas Aylsworth, said contained the least amount of Olaic. The microbes that leave "mold" on the cylinders, are eating the Olaic acid out of the stearic in the cylinders, these leave pits. Early experiments around november of 1888, (previous to this, he had developed a soft but very stable stearic, beeswax, ceresine, caranuba wax compound, the "Yellow Paraffine cylinders" as they are called today.) When Aylsworth first discovered aluminum and lead metallic soaps, he liked the fine grain structure they made, and hardness, except they started wearing the cutters and shavers. Aylsworth had to find a way to soften the metallic soap, to cut better. He used Red Olaic to soften some cylinders, these sweated (a bluish white encrustation, sometimes an actual oil formed on top.) in about april/may of 1889, this problem arose, and so records from about December 1888 to May 1889 are lost, hundereds of recordings were made on the defective blanks, and none survive today. The only surviving records are the 22 natural wax records mentioned above. By the end of 1889 what we call brown wax was developed, and changed very little (Except for the process to make it cheaper, until 1896 aluminum acetate was used and if it was not cooked long enough acetic acid spoiled the batch. In 1896 Edison started using sheet aluminum dissolved in caustic.) The brown wax, was an aluminum stearate tempered with ceresine wax. The stearic manufactured today is from palm wax, and has no olaic acid, so new cylinders, do not get moldy like the old ones. If you have never made a wax blank, then you do not have authority to comment on the elements used I have made thousands of them, and know what I am talking about. Many times I read about people saying that brown wax is beeswax, or a mixture with bugandy pitch, ect, and I just roll my eyes, and laugh. What looks like white stars can form on a humid day while molding the compound even today and I still have not figured what this is, although I have not had this problem in a long time.

[Edisone]

I've been lucky in avoiding new mold on my cylinders, for the most part. Many of the wax ones are stored on pegs in cases, and my place is usually so nonhumid that the cotton lining in the boxed records hasn't promoted mold growth. HOWEVER: there are hundreds of boxed wax cylinders in my front room, which I haven't checked for many years. Those could be ruined, for all I know. Once the pitting mentioned by EPW is established, the record is shot.

Got 60+ , mostly Columbia 2minute records out of an unheated, uncooled attic a while back - amazingly, there's not a spot on any of them! Maybe it was so arid up there that life could not establish itself on the wax .

[WDC]

I am using 70% isopropyl alcohol to clean wax cylinders. By using a soft cloth you can clean the whole recording area with IPA. I use my hand driven shaver or preferably my electric cylinder player to clean a record. First I clean both ends. Then I apply IPA to the whole groove surface, then I take about 2" of a very soft cloth to dry the surface. Finally I take another clean and dry cloth to gently polish the surface. In case a cylinder is very dirty, I may have to repeat the wet and dry part the cloth remains clean. The result is quite beautiful and the sound quality normally improves by a 15% reduced surface noise with dirty brown wax cylinders. It does also work fine with black wax and has not caused any trouble with the white lettering at the title ends.

I consider IPA to be a much safer way than using a detergent such as Labtone. So far, I have been unable to get a detailed list of its ingredients, making it practically impossible to start any reasonable research on the potential chemical impact. I am mostly concerned of any residue that might me left on the record's surface which might cause a long-term reaction. Under normal conditions, IPA will fully evaporate within seconds up to few minutes, not leaving anything behind to seriously worry about. I have used IPA first about four years ago. Since then, every single cleaned cylinder has remained exactly the same. Another benefit: IPA is quite cheap and easily available.

An important note: It is NOT suitable for cleaning celluloid. Camphor was used as a softening additive in the celluloid. The evaporating camphor is the reason why celluloid does shrink and get brittle. Alcohol will dissolve the camphor and therefore significantly speed up the deterioration.

[edisonphonoworks]

NB I wil have to try that. Does it affect wax Amberol records? I found these so unstable that I do not own any, if I take them from one room to the other, they crack, just gently spreading my fingers,s you should in the title end, cracks them from the warmth.

[WDC]

Shawn, I can surely sing along with that. I have also successfully cleaned wax Amberols the same way, of course, being extra super gentle.

I once bought a small set of 6 of these which were apparently kept in the attic or somewhere else without heating. Every single one of them developed a crack by normal handling. Others which had been cared for at normal room temperature have not shown any trouble yet.

I think that most of the wax Amberols come along with internal cracks which are just waiting to come to surface by normal handling. Sometimes you can see the first signs of a crack on one of the edges, usually much better when making the edge wet with alcohol. If something like that is visible you may want to consider stop further handling.

So far, I am glad to have mostly avoided wax Amberols too, only a handful of them has made it into my collection.

[edisonphonoworks]

Shawn, I can surely sing along with that. I have also successfully cleaned wax Amberols the same way, of course, being extra super gentle.

I once bought a small set of 6 of these which were apparently kept in the attic or somewhere else without heating. Every single one of them developed a crack by normal handling. Others which had been cared for at normal room temperature have not shown any trouble yet.

Yes, they are the one records I do not know the formula for, it could be a lead based formula, I have an Edison formula with ebonite, from 1904, and I just feel they did not use it maybe until later, as the canauba formula is the one for most GMs are made with . I think that most of the wax Amberols come along with internal cracks which are just waiting to come to surface by normal handling. Sometimes you can see the first signs of a crack on one of the edges, usually much better when making the edge wet with alcohol. If something like that is visible you may want to consider stop further handling.

So far, I am glad to have mostly avoided wax Amberols too, only a handful of them has made it into my collection.

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[Lenoirstreetguy]

I meant to ask this when this thread was more current. What do you guys know about the formula that Edison used for the wax Amberols? I know that they fiddled with it through the years the wax Amberol was in production, but I've always been curious as to what they tried. The wax Amberol doesn't seem to be prone to mold, but their tendency to self-destruct is most annoying. The formula variation is I'm sure , the reason some seem to play with low surface noise while others sound like sandpaper. That, and the fact that I think a lot have been lethally played with a diamond reproducer a few times. There's also the tendency for some to develop a cloudy precipitate or bloom on the surface.
Any thoughts?

Jim