Greetings! For some time now I have been reading the archives of this list, getting to know who's here and trying to learn new things. The amount of knowledge here is vast.
My interest in phonographs is focused mainly on Edison cylinders, although recently I now find myself building up an interest in diamond disc machines. I am 57 years old and worked a good share of years as a draftsman, all before computers were used. After computers came in and took that field over, the fun went out of it for me and I moved on to study electronics and then worked as a technician for GTE, (later named Verizon). I have always liked machines of all sorts and mechanical design work. My life-long phonograph project has been to be able to make my own brown wax recording blanks for use on Edison cylinder phonographs. That project started way back around 1978, when I first started searching out the patent records for early Edison cylinder recording methods. The short version of my story is that since then, I have successfully gotten my mold working properly to cast the blanks. I have also worked out the formula for making the brown wax. That has proven to be a very labor-intensive process, and there are over a dozen variables that must all be controlled simultaneously, in order to end up with a good, quiet, sensitive recording blank. A large part of this work involves eliminating internal defects in the castings, so that the blank ends up having good surfaces available as it is shaved down into. My website is: http://www.richardslaboratories.com I invite everyone who has not visited it yet to please stop by and have a look. I have done my best to provide as much information as I can about my overall process that I use to make these blanks. There are several videos linked from this site. To see the final reaming, shaving, and testing of a new blank, please see my "finishing operations" video. The recording and playback tests are the last things on that particular video. It runs about 11 minutes. This is the same testing that each blank gets after it is made. Every one of these blanks has its serial number and the date engraved on the title end. They all can be traced to batch numbers and lot numbers of the raw materials, as well as the exact conditions when made. These blanks are for sale. I currently sold out all of my stock that I brought south with me from Illinois to Florida when I came south for the winter. There are about 150 more of these blanks stored in Illinois, ready to be shaved and shipped. By June I will be able to fill more orders for blanks. I am not much of a collector, having only one Edison phonograph. It's Standard model D combination 2/4 machine. It belonged to my grandfather and he bought it used in about 1909. I suppose technically it could be said that I do have a collection of sorts: there are a total of 4 Dictaphone shaving machines, (3 working, one still needs fixing), a Dictaphone model 12 that records and plays, and a Dictaphone Cameo model transcriber that only plays. The Dictaphone shavers work great for shaving the brown wax Edison phonograph blanks. The other Dictaphones work for testing blanks. I also currently have 6 recorders. 5 of those are the later Edison "home" recorders that have the .002 inch thick mica diaphragms and with the cutter and holder cemented to the diaphragm. Those 5 are all ones that I have rebuilt myself. The 6th one is a new automatic that I just picked up at the Orlando show this January. Have not tried it yet. Chuck Richards $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details! _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.org