The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I just finished assembly of this 1908 oak VTLA. With the exception of the pull out shelf all I did was clean and oil the cabinet. The pull out shelf had the appearance of being used as a little work bench. I think a youngster used it as a place to paint models. I stripped the shelf and removed unwanted paint. You'll notice the inside is much darker than the exterior. I find no hints of a refinish. I've wondered if the difference in color is due to aggressive cleaning or possibly environmental conditions like UV light. I bought it from a retired fellow that said it had been in his family for generations so it has not been in the hands of a collector until now, Any ideas? I'm really only curious because I love it just the way it is.

Wow, that's gorgeous! Congrats!

They had trouble in those days with the stains and dyes not being very light-fast. It's discussed in some of the old finishing books I have and that was the attraction to some of the things they did like fuming oak and using arsenic to stain walnut. But then they had to be careful to make sure all of the veneer used in a cabinet came from the same tree and that sort of thing. Some of the suggestions were to add tannic acid to the wood to try and make everything match but there was no way to know (with certainty) until the process was complete. And Victor was not always very careful about how they book matched veneer and that sort of thing anyway so staining was probably the easier path to take. Your machine was probably that "Flemish oak" color as it was called and that was nearly black when it was new. It also had a lot of green in it to kill any red that might be in the oak. They felt that red oak had a more pronounced flake (if it was quartered) than white oak did, so if it was going to be stained really dark, there was no real reason to use white oak since it was more expensive anyway. I've refinished a few pianos that were in the Flemish oak and they were all made around 1907-08 and I've rarely seen that stain used on pianos that were much newer. So that color came and went kind of quickly, and maybe because it was beginning to fade early on. Some of those old finishing books are kind of funny, like one suggesting tying a stout rope around a young guys waist, when fuming oak woodwork in a house and having him open the containers of ammonia upstairs first. "He will appreciate you not having to drag him down the staircase in the event that he is overwhelmed and needs to be pulled out"

That's a nice looking machine, it really turned out well for you. They did a nice job with the veneer on the front of it. I had one of those a long time ago when they were going for a lot of money, so it's been gone a long time now. The decals in those earlier machines are really nice as well. Victor used translucent ink over foil behind the oval where the dog is and if the light is right it practically glows. Those varnish transfer decals were really nice.

I've done some messing around with those Flemish oak recipes in those old finishing books. I don't think very many people today would want something stained almost pitch black like that color ends up being, so maybe it's a good thing that they faded. It's also a really difficult stain to match if it is in fairly good shape except one annoying spot that faded a great deal....

What a beauty!! Very Nice!!!

Gorgeous!

Golden!

That is absolutely gorgeous, who knew?! Nice work on cleaning that up. I wouldn't touch that finish with a 30' pole

We’ve seen this lightened oak exterior syndrome in the past, primarily on Amberola I cabinets. In fact, Earl, you and I experimented with trying to “fix” one of mine a few years back. I decided that it was lovely and original and left it so. Marc bought it from me and I think did the same.

I find no logical reasoning for a natural fade or lightening of the finish, either from light or air, because it just seems unrealistic to expect that to occur so evenly over the entire exterior. Also, how would the boundary between light and dark be so sharp?

Naw, this is it: dealers had unsold stock with the dark oak finish, which became unfashionable in favor of lighter oak, so they had the units redone to make them more sellable. This took place in the mid-teens.

That finish will fade like that on the pianos cases as well, and it will still dark under the lid and along the edges of the case where light didn't get to and under the fallboard as well. Sometimes the grain filler is something else and that doesn't fade, especially if they used asphaltum varnish as part of the finish. They were having a lot of new products to finish things come on the market in the 1890's and early 1900's and beyond and thanks to coal tar dyes had all sorts of new colors they could experiment with. Most of those dealers also knew how to use transfer decals and they would have refinished the whole cabinet, and not just the outside. They didn't have masking tapes like we have now and it would have really been hard to draw a sharp like between what was getting remover on it, and what wasn't. You'd also have to bleach the wood once the varnish was removed.

They don’t get much nicer. That is one elegant machine.