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I learned 2 very important things today that any serious collector of Victor Victrolas simply must know:

#1. - I had no idea that Vicrolas were NOT made of solid oak. They are a form of particle board covered with a fairly heavy veneer. Same goes for all other woods.

#2. - Only 20% to 30% of all Victrolas made were finished in oak! Of all of those hundreds of thousands of Victrolas built between 1911 and 1926 it is estimated that only 6% to 8% have survived.

I had no idea!

I don't think Victor used particle board.

1923VictorFan wrote:I learned 2 very important things today that any serious collector of Victor Victrolas simply must know:

#1. - I had no idea that Vicrolas were NOT made of solid oak. They are a form of particle board covered with a fairly heavy veneer. Same goes for all other woods.

#2. - Only 20% to 30% of all Victrolas made were finished in oak! Of all of those hundreds of thousands of Victrolas built between 1911 and 1926 it is estimated that only 6% to 8% have survived.

I had no idea!

Where are you getting this information? As with any assertion, these two are only acceptable subject to confirmation from reliable sources. I know for a fact, because I own one, that my VV-XI in mahogany is not "particle board" underneath the veneer; rather, it is mahogany veneer over plywood. I can easily determine this by examining the end grain. Please cite your sources!

Hi All,
I was asked to provide my sources which has been kind of hard because I hadn't written anything down but I think I found most of them. I started this thread only because I thought I had found some little known nuggets of important info that others might not know as well. I thought that "The Victor Victrola Page" was a standard, accepted resource. "Collectors Weekly" is not anything I am familiar with but it has a very professional look about it.
If their info is incorrect I'd really like to know because I'm just trying to research on my own and educate myself. I love my small collection of pre-1925 Victor records and my 1923 VV-VI. In fact, earlier today I bought my second machine...a really clean VV-IV from 1914 for $138.00. Now that I have 2 machines I think I'm officially a new "collector"

Source: Collectors Weekly.
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/article ... paul-edie/

What types of materials are the phonographs made out of?

Edie: Victor used a whole slew of different finishes. You could get woods, but they weren’t solid wood. A lot of people assume that if they’re walnut, they’re solid walnut, but they’re not. Solid woods warp, so they used a particleboard core for the actual body of the phonograph, and then covered that with a thin sheet of veneer of the type of wood finish you ordered – walnut or mahogany or oak. But the veneer is good enough that you can usually repair them or sand them out and clean them up and get them looking good.

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Source: The Victor Victrola Page
http://www.victor-victrola.com/Wood%20F ... ectory.htm

The vast majority of Victrolas were made of mahogany, 70 or 80 percent of them. The oaks would be second, and they made some high-end finishes in circassian walnut and other special woods that are very collectible.

"Most Victor products were not produced out of solid wood. Excepting for small side panels used on some external horn machines, the cabinets are made of a composite-wood core, covered with veneer. This was done to keep costs reasonable, as well as to reduce the tendency for panels to warp (common on solid wood panels).

They made around seven million Victrolas and we estimate about six to eight percent survived. So if you believe that, there are 700,000 or so still remaining. Some are just junk. If you go on eBay, there’s always of slew of them.

I had no idea that this thread would become contraversial but I appreciate all o the responses. It tells me that you guys are really passionate about your hobby and THAT is very cool.

Since I have seen both Edison Diamond Disk machines and Victrola type machines that completely disintegrated because left out in the open for many years I can say for certain that none of those that I've seen used particle board. Most were using laminated wood/plywood with a wood veneer on top, but corner posts etc were usually made from solid wood. I'm not even sure if Ikea type particle board was used at all back then. I assume that laminated plywood can be described as "composite wood", but particleboard seems to me an incorrect description. Even the leather or cloth covered cases of portables seem to be made from wood or plywood, not from particleboard.

There were both internal and external horn machines with cases made completely from solid wood, but those were probably more the smaller "table top" type machines I guess.
Andreas

Although the Edie site is pretty useful, it may reflect the author's unfamiliarity with woodworking nomenclature. Feeling the heft of most of the Victrola or Edison cabinets one might suspect that the core wood is oak. Like Andreas, I can assert that at least my Edison C-19 is made of oak strips (about 2-3" wide by about ¾" thick) glued together into panels with veneer glued on both sides for beauty & strength. The veneer was Mahogany on the outside face and some much cheaper wood on the inside face. I suspect that the Oak finished models were constructed this way as well. It was like plywood on steroids. I had to replace a badly deformed bottom shelf that bears out these observations. The core looks like white oak and has all sorts of deformities like knots and worm holes - bad for final finish but great for core wood. In fact I've re-used some of that oak while restoring a Standard Model F lid. It made for an excellent match.

1923VictorFan: Sorry for driving it further into the ground. I only mention it here because your observations were actually quite interesting, and even mostly right (if one simply replaces "particle board" with "veneered panel" or "early plywood".) As a semi-pro nit-picker myself, I do share in the slight annoyance of one inaccurate web source getting re-used by other web sources which perpetuates the mistake. But, that's not your fault. It's just the web being the web.

Regards,
Martin

I believe Victor used oak as a core wood. That's why a Victor product is much heavier than something like a Brunswick of equal size. Jerry

Hey guys,
Seriously...everything is cool. I'm glad I posted that info because I would have otherwise accepted it as factand probably "perpetuated the misinformation" as well.
Do you guys feel that the table models; VV-IV and VV-VI are not solid oak but laminated/veneered? I have seen lots of floor model Victrolas shedding their veneer in strips but never seen a table top model shed their skin. I have always assumed the smaller oak products (table models) were solid and that only the "expensive" non-oak woods were veneered.
Thanks for all of the great info and insight into the topic. It ain't always easy being a newbie.

1923VictorFan,

IIRC, Look For the Dog explains the whole cabinet making process. In general if it's a Victor it's solid, and if it's a Victrola it's veneer.
(It's been a while since I read the book, well worth the time in my opinion.)

Retrograde wrote:IIRC, Look For the Dog explains the whole cabinet making process. In general if it's a Victor it's solid, and if it's a Victrola it's veneer.
(It's been a while since I read the book, well worth the time in my opinion.)

Read a book? That could take hours. How old-fashioned.