Hi,
I hope Christmas Day went as well as possible for everyone.
Like a lot of older couples, we have had a quiet Christmas with a video call to our children who live quite away away which broke up the day. Before Christmas I made a bit of a Christmas video where our old music box got a showing. On moving the box off the top of an old military chest we use as a sort of coffee table it left a couple of scratches; this wasn’t a problem, at least we know how those particular scratches came about. The cause was a nail that held one of the feet of the box was a bit high, a hammer job! Having found a hammer and belted the offending nail, I thought stick a bit of felt on the feet just to finish the job. Having found suitable material wife came in and said the box could do with a bit of a polish! The musical box is very heavy maybe as much as 20/24 kg - 50lbs ish. Not wanting the wife to harm herself before creating Christmas dinner I took the movement out. That’s a good idea! If you took the lid off and the glass out it would be a lot easier to clean and polish. What was going to be a quick maintenance job was getting a bit stretched. Wife went off with the woodwork and I was left with the movement. It was a bit dusty and I thought I would give it a bit of an oil. The power was let off and the bearings we washed out using cotton wool buds and lighter fuel and having applied new oil the movement was set up to run. For those that might not know many of the older musical boxes play many tunes using the same drum, it this particular case 12. So, in effect there are 12 different sets of pins on the drum; the tunes are changed by moving the drum relative to the comb. The total movement required for the 12 tunes is just about 5 mm. While listening to the music box which was set to change tunes a little tune contamination could be heard for which there can be several causes one of which is a loose detent that acts on the cam that changes the tunes. This turned out to be the case; and right! The movement has to be almost completely taken apart to tighten it. There aren’t very many parts to a music box and it didn’t take long, a further tweak was to use some kitchen foil as shim to get the pins to line up exactly with the comb. All this took most of the afternoon so missed the Queen’s Speech again! Still it filled the day and we had a great meal in the evening
The box was left over night for the glue to dry that was used to hold the felt to the feet and the box assembled the movement fitted this morning. SWMBO has decide given the work involved the music box will be on display and not put back on the floor under a shelf. Some photographs attached.
Take care Tony.
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looks like you filled your day pretty well Tony , the music box is an interesting story & one of the things I noted (no pun intended) was the beautiful Calligraphy on the music box lid.
Tony, I have had the same problem with the same nails on
the bottom of my machines over the years. You have done
some nice work on the music box to make it as good as
new. Enjoy the music and have a great New Year.
A wonderful way to fill the day Tony.
Happy Boxing Day.