The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

After decades of being a disk collector and years of Amberol collecting, I am off on a new frontier with the addition of a 2/4 minute Triumph and it's necessary records. I keep the Amberols in drawers, some on pegs, others in their containers.

I have a 96 record salesman's case in nice condition that had some wax records in it when I opened it. Some of the records could have had some mold but were so dirty, it was really hard to say. I have cleaned the case well and plan to let it sit open in the sun after misting the interior with bleach. I thought I would do this treatment a few times before I use it to store wax records. Do you think this is effective? When in use it will be always climate controlled in a low humidity environment (the hall closet). I don't want to endanger good records by bad storage.

I am still in the deep learning stage of wax records and their care.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Ron Babb
Tacoma, WA

Ron, I think you've done a good job of planning ahead your road map. Moisture should be indeed the only thing that you would have to be careful looking at in this situation. A constant environmental temperature at normal humidity levels should be the best protection against mold.

I generally assume, that it's practically impossible to completely get rid of all possible mold spores. They are in the air and live with us just microbes do. With mold it's just the question not allowing those spores to start growing on something.

I have most of my cylinders stored in drawers with their boxes, many of them with open or w/o lids. Especially many of the European Edison boxes close to tightly that they can be potential thread of capturing moisture. In this case I usually put a little pack of silica gel inside the cylinder into the tightly closed box. It has worked so far over several years with no problems. Of course, if you open the lid regularly you will have to replace the silica gel or heat it up for drying.

A few more words on BA's:

Blue Amberols should be stored best in tightly closed boxes with little ventilation as possible, basically the total opposite of what should be done with wax. My observation and several talking to chemists have come to the conclusion, that there is a lot of wrong believes about the aging of BA's.

Unlike many other resources will say, the plaster core will not collect any significant amount of moisture to swallow. Instead, it is the outer celluloid tube that shrinks and applies an enormous pressure onto the the inner plaster cylinder, which the celluloid surrounds. This does actually cause the shrinking effect, squeezing the plaster mostly evenly or sometimes causing it to crack.

It is the evaporating camphor that was used as a softening agent for the celluloid, making it now smaller and more brittle without it. Eventually all Blue Amberols may come to a nasty end of completely split celluloid, that cannot stand the pressure anymore. So, keeping the little remaining camphor inside is the best one can do right away. This is achieved best by little air exposure as possible.

This is also the reason why no celluloid record should be cleaned with alcohol. It is a perfect solvent for camphor, causing it to escape even quicker.