Refinishing The Cabinet On This Pathe Freres Phonograph - Lacquer Toner Experiment

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Amateur Repair Time. If you didn't see our previous video, I've got this, what I thought was a Victrola, a Victor Victrola, cabinet here that we've been working on. And it was actually, it's a Canadian French company, Pathé Fréry, I believe that's how you pronounce it. Beautiful little machine. We took the motor all apart on the last video and worked on that, had to order a new spring for it. But I want to try to work on the cabinet a little bit. I think this would be a good one to try to figure out something that I've been wondering for quite a while. One thing I wanted to point out is that this grill doesn't remove from this one. This is a Pathé Fréry model 50. And the one that's just the Pathé, which would be made in Canada, this is the American made one. It was their American, basically division of Pathé. The one that was made in Canada, there's a gentleman that's got a video of it here on YouTube. And his, the grill comes out like most of them do. So I don't know if someone has modified this one and just glued it in, or if it was designed where the American ones, the grill didn't come out. And the reason that's important is because there's some damage here. So it would have been cool to remove it and lay it down flat. I could have fixed it, glued it, clamped it, all that, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to do all that. I mean, still get a clamp on it or something, but so that's an issue. And the cabinet is all kind of faded and dirty. And so we're going to try to clean it up on this one. Now watch, watch what the inside looks like. Look at the hole. So look at the finish, this beautiful mahogany red finish, and then compare it to this. So I would love to get that, this to look like that. I don't know that that's possible though, but we're going to attempt, we're going to do a So I think what might be the smartest thing to do first is to remove this motor board and then work on it separately because there's a hidden area under the platter here that's all dirty and dusty. I don't know that under that dirt, it will be like this though, because it's been protected inside the cabinet. But I think if we work on this first, maybe I'll get a kind of a good little process down and then we can do some of the outside and see if we can restore some of it. I would love to get that nice shiny lacquer red mahogany look back on the exterior of it. That would be so cool, but I don't know that we'll get there, but we'll attempt it. Okay. So I'm just going to pull this board out and we'll work on it. I showed this in the previous video, just all of the dirt down in here. So I think while I've got it up here on the count on the desk, I'll go ahead and vacuum this out and we'll save this little label. I'll save anything in there that looks like it could be something, but a lot of it is just a bunch of bug parts. There's a bunch of needles down there. We don't need any of them. They're old and rusty. I don't see any screws or anything. This says high fidelity, less record wear. So this is some kind of wrapper for needles. Yeah. So I'm just going to vacuum all this out. I'm going to clean it all up and then we'll set this down and we'll work on this motor board. So this was the speed control that we took off in the previous video. All right. So what I'm going to attempt to do is clean it with Gojo. I've heard about this for years. I read up on it a little bit more. Basically, if you put it on here, this stuff is just strong enough that it slightly relaxes the lacquer finish and you can clean it off and it will kind of reflow the lacquer and make it look a lot more like it originally did. I didn't realize that you had to leave it on for a little while. So you give it about five minutes and then carefully wipe it off. So that's what we're going to do. So I'm going to try that. We'll see if it cleans up this mess that's under the platter. If it screws anything up, we won't really know because it's under the platter. So that's fine. And if we get good results here, like I said, we'll try it on the main cabinet and just give it a go and see. Now after we do that, I've got some wood conditioner too that I'm going to use on it. So I'm going to use, I've got some Howard's, I can't remember what it's called, but Howard's wood conditioner. Not the Howard's Restora finish. There's like a conditioner too. You'll see it here in a minute. So let me spread some of this on there and see if that cleans it up a little bit. Okay. So first thing I did was just wipe it down with soapy water and a paper towel to get as much of that crap off of there as I could. It didn't get all of it. So now we'll try a little bit of Gojo. Maybe I'll do just like this corner. So we'll have something to compare it to. Okay. So got them cat-like reflexes folks. So I put it on from here to here and I let it sit for five minutes and then I just started and I put it on kind of goopy, not crazy, but you know, it was puddled up and then I started just rubbing it off and there was so much of it. I just rubbed over here and I just finished that like 30 seconds ago. So we'll see. I mean, it's dry to the touch, but I can feel something there. So there's something still on it. So you can see, I just transferred it up there. So I'm going to let it dry a little bit and see how much of that sheen it keeps. That looks freaking awesome. But, and I haven't put any wood conditioner on it yet. This is all just Gojo juice. Yeah. So I need to let it dry for like, I don't know. I'll let it dry for a while, maybe an hour and just see if it, if it stays like this or not. But I wiped this off everything that I could as much as I could. Okay. So it's been an hour and a half. It feels dry. It doesn't feel like it's coming off or anything. It just feels like that's the finish. And that is remarkably similar to the rest of the finish inside from there to there. Yeah. I think it breaks down the lacquer just a little bit to kind of reflow it. That works perfect. Okay. So I'm going to do the rest of it. And then I want to work on the top of the case, which doesn't even look red anymore. It looks like a completely different color, like it's Brown. So let me finish this part and then I'll work on that a little bit. Okay. So I did the top half this side, obviously, and it's not as impressive. I think it's because this wood, this finish is in much better shape. So it was just easier to clean up the top. It did make it look a lot better. And I only did one application. So maybe we can do more. It's hard for me to believe that this outside was ever red. It just, it doesn't look anywhere like it. It's hard for me to believe that it faded that bad. I know it's been a hundred years, but it's just a completely different color. And if you look at this mahogany, it's actually inherent in the wood. It seems like, you know, mahogany I've always thought of as a red wood. And so even in the places that aren't stained, like in these holes, it's still red. You know, it's just, it's a red wood. Okay. This doesn't look that way. This looks more like walnut to me. So I don't know. I don't know if the, maybe we can tell by the inside, like on the lip or something, but it could have been that it was refinished too. Maybe somebody has redone this at some point. You wouldn't think they'd be able to completely do it from red to brown very easily though, because it's like a medium brown. So I don't know. Maybe it, maybe it has just faded. I'm not going to refinish it. I'm just going to clean it up the best we can. And then we'll see what the, the feed-in wax does as well. But let's look inside the lip and see if, if it looks more red, like at the edge, if we can see a transition from red to brown on the same wood or something. Okay. So obviously none of this has been cleaned yet. So clearly all that is red and all of that is red, but was the outside that exact same color? Has it really faded that bad? I mean, look at the brown. I just can't tell. It almost looks like that line. That's red. I don't know. Hmm. What are we looking at there? Did they use two colors or what are we? I guess it could be, I've been messing around with this lacquer, this toner lacquer. So as I understand it, the way they did it was, Oh, look at that. That's not red in there. Yep. Okay. All right. So the wood is not inherently red. See it. Okay. So they, as I understand it, they use this toner lacquer. So the lacquer itself had tone in it. So whenever they sprayed it on, they're spraying basically a clear coat lacquer on that has red in it. So it could be that the outside, um, just the UV rays or whatever have taken all the red pigment out of it. And, and there's hardly any lacquer at all left with it. So like this does feel really dry on the outside. And so on the top where I did it, I think the lacquer is probably just really thin. And so you're seeing more of the natural color of the wood underneath it. Um, and it just, it doesn't have the red tone in the actual suspended in the clear coat anymore. So if you had mahogany, um, toner, lacquer toner, you could probably spray it on the outside and get it to look similar to that. Let me see if I can find a video of somebody spraying red mahogany lacquer toner. Okay. So Banderson TV to the rescue, uh, Bob Anderson's channel. He, you know, is an expert on this crap. So he's actually, he was doing a TV, but he's also doing this, uh, dresser. So see, you can see that it's the same Brown that we've got because it's faded. Okay. And he's using Mohawk, uh, mahogany paint and he's got the red back. I said paint it's blacker toner. Look at that. So the red is mixed into the lacquer and it gives you that finish back. Now he's using Brown mahogany. Or oil-based paints. I would be interested in seeing what the red mahogany looks like because ours is red. I mean, it looks Asian. It's so red. I don't know how well this is going to show me filming it like this, but he is using red Brown mahogany and it looks more Brown than the inside of ours. Ours has this almost, um, almost like a purplish red. It's just a crazy red. Um, this one does look more Brown. And then there's this dark red mahogany that looks even more Brown. These are the swatches of like their touch-up sticks. And then this is the regular mahogany. And to me that looks more red and looks very similar to what we've got. And, you know, they always called it a mahogany finish. That's what I always understood that real red finish to be a mahogany finish. And, you know, we've got mahogany, red Brown mahogany and dark red mahogany. Just regular rahogamy mahogany. What did I just say? It's getting late folks. Just regular mahogany, uh, looks the closest to me. So I might get some of that. I don't know that I'm going to refinish the whole thing though, but I might want to down the road or something. So I've got these, uh, Magnavox, um, turntable cabinets and it is the same kind of like very red mahogany. There's not much Brown in it at all. It's like, it's a very red mahogany, but let me show you another one. So I've got this old GE, um, stereo cabinet as well. That's also mahogany, but it's more of a Brown mahogany. So I think this is more of the color he was looking for on that TV that he was refinishing and we need the more red one. Um, so I think the red one is just normal mahogany and this is Brown mahogany. So that's just my guess at it at least. So I'm going to order some of that regular red mahogany toner. So it's much more like the Magnavox set up. It's just really red. You can see there's nothing like the, uh, the one I was just showing you, it's more of like a Brown. So that's my guess at least. Okay. So I'm cleaning through the rest of it. And, um, the, the piece right here that was, uh, broken, there was a little sliver that had kind of slid behind it and made it where it wouldn't go back. How it was. So I pulled that piece out and was able to clamp it well to get it where it's lined up again, how it was supposed to be. And so I just pumped a bunch of freaking, um, wood glue in there to try to kind of build up some of the missing material. And then I don't have a little tiny clamp that would work on that. So I've just put some, uh, painter's tape on it that should hold it in place. Of course, I'm gonna have a problem when I go to remove the tape, it's probably gonna be glued to it, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. A little extra glue for us. The horn, it's hard to clean because I got to use my fingers. So I put, I put a rod in there to push the, uh, the, uh, rag around. The entire back of the horn was full of leaves. So I took them all out and threw them away. Uh, but we're getting there. I think I'm going to try to spray a little bit of it and just see if it makes it more red. Um, it's so dark though. I don't want to go too crazy with it because it'll just make it this really dark mess. Um, or it might not, I don't know. Maybe whenever the, the, the, the toner hits it, it'll lighten it up a little bit. I don't know. I don't think you can really go lighter with the toner, but it, since it was originally that same color or a similar color, maybe we'll get somewhere on it. So I'm going to try that. And I, um, and so I'm going around, I'm cleaning the rest of it with Gojo. So I did the rest of the top. It looks pretty good. I would just leave it how it is because it looks nice, but it's the wrong, it just, it's a completely different color than the inside. So I would like to get it more that color. If you compare the outside to the inside, the inside is darker though. So I don't know, we might be all right. I still got to do the sides. Um, and remember I was saying that I had another one. Well, I've been thinking, man, why does that other one look exactly like it? If this is, you know, so I would just went and look, the other one is a Pate Ferreris, Ferreris, Ferreris. I've forgotten how to say it. No one told me how to say it. I was just making it up. Ferreris, Ferreris, a Pate Ferreris, model 50. It's the same exact one, but it's oak. It's like a light oak color. So we'll do a video on that eventually. And on that one, I still, I could not get this out on that one too. I was just messing with it a little bit, but this part seems like it's farther back. And the board inside is the same as the one on the video from the Victrola collector that we were watching on YouTube. So I don't know, but we'll end up doing a whole video on that as well, but it's a completely different setups and, but it still says model 50 and it's the American one because it's Pate Ferreris, whatever. Okay. So I'm doing the side with the Gojo. Um, look at, look how it does lighten up when it's wet. It's not the Gojo making it do that. It's just that it's, it's glossy. So new lacquer that's tinted red very well may look, make it look right. So I'm going to try it at least. This would be a good one to test it on. We'll try it on the back first just to make sure. So people won't get too upset. Worst case, you just sand it all off. I'm not going to, you know, I think it's going to be just fine. But yeah, so, you know, you can see when it's wet, it looks fantastic. So if that were just a little more red, this would be really nice. So the back is a little more red. It's not as red as the inside, obviously, but it is a little more red. So, um, I guess it just was sitting against something longer and didn't get quite as much UV rays on it or whatever it is that fades it. Okay. This is the left side wet. You can kind of see it right on the back. It's a little red. I think it's just completely faded. I'm trying to get as much dirt off as I can so it doesn't get trapped in the lacquer if we spray some on it. Okay. So I sanded the back down a little bit with some 320 grit and then I'm putting our mahogany, red mahogany Mohawk toner lacquer on it, just the back. And obviously folks, this is a test. I'm not an expert at wood refinishing. Uh, and it's working pretty good. I'm getting a little bit of fish eyes though. So I might need to seal it first. So, um, I made when I do this, cause it's still got wax and grease and all that. And I don't think I'll ever be able to get all of it out. Um, it is reddening it up though. If you look at, if you open it up and compare that to the inside, it's similar. Let me get the motor board so you can see the difference when they're right next to each other. But I think I might do another coat or two as well, but it's, uh, it's not crazy off. We can get just a little bit more. I think it would, it would be good. So, uh, like I said, I'm gonna try one of the sides by sealing it first and then putting the toner on it to see, to make sure we don't get any of this little bit of fish eyeing that we're getting going on. And, um, we'll see if, uh, maybe three or four or five or six coats, we'll get it red enough that it kind of matches this. Okay. So it's been raining for about a week. So, um, I had to wait. You can't spray lacquer when there's a lot of humidity out. It just makes a huge mess. You get all kinds of white cloudy stuff in the finish. So I had to wait. I was going to seal it, but when I just went to get the sealer, I don't have any sealer. I never bought it. That would be better. I sanded it down, um, with three 20 grit just to really to help clean it up a little bit more. Our little touch up here where we glued it back together could use some wood filler, but you know, I'm not trying to make it perfect and I don't really have the ability to make it perfect. I think it'll look better though. It would be better if you seal it because the problem you'll run into is there's a little bit of orange peel. This is dust, but it's been sitting for a week. There's a little bit of orange peel right here because of the grease and stuff that's, or the wax, um, just the oily residue that's in it. So if you sealed it, it would stop that from showing through. But so I'm going to put several light coats of this nice mahogany on there. And I'm just going to keep going until it reddens up a little bit. The back, see how the back is pretty red and I'm just going to go ahead and spray the whole thing. I'm gonna do a coat, wait a little while, do a coat, wait a little while. This stuff dries so quick you can do a coat like every 10 minutes. Okay, so that's three coats. I did a coat and then sanded it lightly with steel wool, just trying to knock down some of the orange peel and where it's not, it doesn't have a smooth finish. And, uh, then did a second coat, waited 15 minutes or so, hit it with the steel wool just to, again, try to level out some of the, you know, little burrs and stuff that are sticking on it or whatever gets caught in it. And then, uh, a third coat. So this is the third coat. I'm gonna let it dry a little bit. Then we're gonna put some clear lacquer on it. All right, folks. So I've been doing a bunch of research and basically if I wind this up, this regulator will not spin like it should. Now the brakes on right now, right? But it should pretty freely spin quite a bit. I can't rig this up without the, I don't have the, uh, the speed control fixed yet. All right. So now I've got the, the break off of it. So watch this thing spin. I've now, I've taken all the tension off the spring. Now, obviously we've got the screwed up weight that I've soldered back on. I've soldered the spring back together. Um, but this is just, it's not spinning as free as it should. I've got this unwound enough that we're actually probably trying to wind it back right now, but I'll show you what the problem is. I've watched some videos. I mentioned them earlier by this gentleman named the dyslexic genius who does phonograph repairs on YouTube. And, uh, he actually knows what he's doing. I don't. And he was, you know, if you watch enough, he just kind of shows how all of this works. So this governor, if I take this off, this thing spins freely and it spins the spindle freely. Everything's cool. The spring interacts fine. When you put this governor back on, uh, it won't, basically the spring will not push the governor. So you got to start it and it'll run for a little bit and then it'll stop. And I'm sure it never gets up to 78 RPM or I think these actually run a little more than that. Don't they run like 80 or something like that? Or maybe I'm thinking about the, um, Edison ones, but anyway, see how it's spinning. It's just not the greatest. Okay. Well look down here. Now you should have a little bit of wiggle room in it. And we do the inertia of this thing though. If I push this this way, see that the end of it going into the, this is the bearing here, see the end of the bar. Now watch what happens when I start spinning it. Okay. See how it moved this way. Now it's came back out. So it moves like that when it's spinning just because of the, the physics, you know, here's the problem. When that goes down, it's now riding on the shoulder of this shaft. That's because there's a ball bearing missing in there. There's supposed to be a little tiny ball inside of that. So that, that thing spins on it. It shouldn't go down in the shaft that far, but it can go down in the shaft that far because there's a little, a little ball missing. I don't know if it fell out when I took it apart or what. Some people put one on this end too, but you don't really need to because it never pushes up into that because when it's spinning, it goes this way, right? I guess I, did I just prove that that's wrong? Well, maybe we want one on both sides, whatever. Okay. Now also, if you look here, this is the spring barrel coming through the plate. You see the pinion. This is the, that other gear coming through the plate. You see the pinion, but then we've got this. And I was wondering why, why is this different? That's because that's the spindle itself that goes through the platter. And in most of these motors, that has a bearing in it. So I'm going to take this off. We can leave it all together and see if there's room for a bearing and a ball in there. Or if on this particular model, they just use this little plate. They want, what they're doing is they want that spindle to not be spinning on its shoulder. They want it to be where it never bottoms out. Like this is bottoming out. Like that shouldn't, that shouldn't stay up on that small part of the, of the shank of that spindle there. If it goes like that, there's more friction and it doesn't spin as well as it should. So I'm going to take this bearing off so I can show you the inside of it, that there's no ball in there. And then we're going to see if we've got the right size. I ordered a bunch. Okay. So like I said, I already had all of the tension off of the spring. You can't do that with the spring wound up. That thing will go and that spring will spin really quick. And you might tear off teeth and tear this up and everything else, but I already had it all the way down. And the way I could tell was you can kind of tell when you're moving it by hand and eventually it'll get where you can just rock this back and forth, even with the governor in there where it's all kind of loose. So, you know, that there's no tension on it. So here is, this is actually considered the bearing, but there's a little ball that goes in there and there's nothing in there. You can, I can see something down in the bottom of it. Yeah, there you go. See that little reflection down there, but I don't believe that's the ball. I think that's just the end of the, uh, the end of this. And the giveaway is the thing bottoms out. So it shouldn't be able to bottom out because with that bearing in there, it shouldn't be able to go in far enough to bottom out. So we need, we need a little BB that'll fit down in there. So you can buy them from the phonograph shop. I didn't know really what size I needed. So I just bought an entire assortment and I, you know, I'm probably going to work on a bunch more of these. I didn't realize that they were like that, but apparently all of these governors have that on it. So I just bought a whole assortment. They're in millimeter, but I wrote down what the fairly close SAE number would be on it. This is a Canadian company, but this is the American version is made in New York. So I think it's either going to be the 2 million, 2 millimeter or the 2.5 millimeter. So I'm just going to get the one that's about the same size as the shaft of the governor. And since that fits in there so well, the ball should be about the same size. I think that's how I'm going at it. All right. So 2.5 millimeter like slid right in there. And so now the end of that should spin on that and it should never bottom out. Okay. Now this one definitely does not have a bearing in it. I turned it just right. I don't know if I can do it now. It's just so small, but you can actually see that the bottom is brass. Yeah. See how it's brass down in there. So that is just the bottom of the bearing. There is no ball in there. All right. So I got to work on this one to get that out a little bit. It's just so it's seized up from all the grease and oil and stuff. Another interesting thing to point out is it's not centered. Neither one of them was centered. And they do that so that you can, there's a screw head on the other end. So you can turn it and adjust how close the governor is matched to the gear. So if you turn this, it'll move it out a little bit or move it in a little bit. And it's just a little bit, you know, because it's oblong. So that's pretty cool. So I had some kind of issue with that. I don't think the weight is going to cause a huge problem, but it might. Okay. So I got them in there. I don't know if I've got it adjusted right. You know, it kind of depends on where on this gear this is too. It kind of has to be lined up right. So I don't know if I've got it right or not, but I took this one off. I had this all apart earlier, but I didn't realize about the bearing thing. And you can see the end of this is of the spindle is rounded. And then this fits on it. Let's see if we can tell if there's any room for a bearing. There is room for a bearing, just barely. So is that a little well for a little tiny bearing? It looks so smooth. I don't think that that has done that. I think that that's actually a little indention where you're supposed to have a little tiny bearing. What do you think? Does that make any sense? I don't think that wore that in there, but then again, why is it so shiny if it didn't? Let me see if I can look at it closer. It's too shiny. I don't think it's designed for a bearing. I think that's literally where it is the bearing and that has been doing it. So I think that in there has worn that shiny place. I don't, I don't think there's going to be enough room to put a little ball bearing in there. All right. So I'm just going to put that back and then we'll see if the governor is working right. Okay. It's working on its own now, but it's a little noisy. I think it's because the pinion up here is bouncing around a little bit because the ball bearing was a little smaller on that end than that end. I don't think we need the one up here. So I think it's, I think we need the bearing a little bit farther down on that shaft on this side and the speed control is working. It basically, as it spins, the centrifugal motion of the weights pulls this thing back in. And depending on where you have this set, it stops it. So it only allows it to come to here, for instance, that's one speed, or if it only allows it to come to here, that's a different speed. The noise, I don't think is the, the weight. It may be that it's off weight, you know, off balance and that's the noise, but I think it's this pinion bumping around up here. But it seems to be running real smooth. And I don't, like I said, I don't think you go that fast with it. I think you leave it more out like here or something up to get the right speed. So I'm really gonna have to play with that to make sure I get the right speed, but it just sounds kind of junky, which you know, Phonograph is all about how it sounds. All right, so I took the BB out of this one and it, you know, you still hear it, but it's much more, it's just a different sound. So I think that's probably right. They do make a little noise when they turn and this is under the motor board. So I'm not sure that you would hear all that amplified, maybe. And I think the speed control is working. The speed control adjustment just isn't working. You know, you don't adjust it on the fly. You either have it set here or here or here, and it'll be whatever it's set at each time. So I think that's working. So you know what that means? We got to work on the speed control adjustment. That's the last thing. So this is the speed control that they had rigged up in it. Now in the previous video, I think it was the previous video, we figured out that this was the original speed control. So it says slow and fast. That's actually backwards than how they are a lot of times. A lot of them say fast on the left and slow on the right. And right here in the middle, there is a walking rooster. And you can actually see where it says Pathé up there above the knob, below the knob. This was their, what do you call it? Their avatar or whatever, their logo. They had a walking rooster on their records that they sold as well. I can't figure out how you take this thing apart though, but I can see what the problem is. So they have put a screw in the bottom of it to make it the right length because you have to push that arm down. So this, let me get my hand on it, this arm sticks out here like this. And this goes down in there like that. And they have it set up where, right? Now the problem is you can't adjust it. When you turn this, it's not going to adjust that. But the reason for that is, I guess they could have tried to make the screw the exact right length. Somebody has modified this obviously. Originally though, it would have had a little pin in there that was kind of like a screw. But the way this thing works is, if I can find it, when you have the, that's it right there. That hole right there is supposed to have something in it. So when you turn the piece on the top, that's slow which would be all the way in, right? And then if you turned it the other way, this would elongate as it went because there would be a pin in that hole making it longer as it went. And when you got all the way over here to fast, the screw would be longer. There's a little bolt that was on it, right? And so that would make this go down farther which would allow the governor to slip out farther, which would make it even faster. So depending on the length of that screw depends on how that governor, how fast it allows it to go. So this is like probably too fast, but if I were to turn the knob and make the screw up shorter, it would slow it down, right? So you can get right on your 78 by that. And there's quite a bit of adjustment in it, but that little pin has broke off. So whenever they put the screw in there, they probably had it right, but then the pin broke off. So I think I might be able to just put a little nail in there. There's like a hole or something. I might be able to put like a little brad in it. You just need something sticking out the side in that shaft. Where did it go? There it is. So there should be something in there, but whatever was supposed to be in there fell out or broke or something. I guess it was like a roll pin that just stuck through the side, but I can't see how to completely disassemble this so we can mess with it. That's on there pretty good. There's another pin there that just, maybe that's what's keeping it from coming out. Maybe if I took that pin out, this whole piece would slide off. I don't have a punch set here. Well, maybe I do. I don't know. I hate them. All it needs is a pin in that little hole. So if I can find something that will fit in there pretty good, that will solve our whole problem. We just need for when this turns, when that shaft turns, it by necessity has to elongate this because this won't turn. Okay, I think I got it actually. I kept looking around and I found I had a little piece of wire stock. It's a little thinner than a coat hanger. A coat hanger might have worked. I don't know what size is this. I don't even know where I got this, but I had it in a, um, I've got a drawer with a whole bunch of like a organizing cabinet with a whole bunch of screws and nails and stuff in it. And most of it's for clock parts. And so this may be like, um, wire for, to replace the pinions in, um, lanterns on, uh, clock, um, gears where the, where the gear comes around and meshes with some of the other pinions. There's a little thing they call a lantern that has like little bars in it and the gear rubs up against that and turns the little lantern. Um, so that may be that, but anyway, it seemed like it was the perfect size. And so I just cut a little piece off these big old lineman's pliers or whatever they are, and it wouldn't quite fit. So I hit it with a hammer and bam. So it does its thing now. And if you look, it never hits the end, no matter, it's like I've went all the way off the thing. It won't turn anymore, but that pin is not actually hitting the end. So there's no stress on it. And so the stress is on the top of it there. As you turn it, you get to the other end. It also never hits the end. So you can't just keep cranking it and break the thing. Um, so that is all the way in, which is slow. Then if we go all the way the other way, so now the stress is on the bottom of it, but that's, you know, I don't think it's going to break. Um, now we're on fast, which has it all the way out. So I think I'm just going to leave that screw in there. I don't know who put that in there, but it's quite a while ago. And we may have to change that to make it just the right length to where it actually is in the range of 78. Cause we've only got this much room here that we're changing it. And the thing isn't held in place by this. It isn't held stopped by, by this. It's held stopped by this break up here. And the break is the felt's pretty screwed up. The leather, I got a little replacement piece. Maybe we'll try to get in there. I can do it without breaking everything. Okay. So I've got that back on, got that back on. I put a new piece of leather in it. Uh, and I wound it up. This motor has screws right there and right there. And there's a little cover over there. And so those keep it up just a little bit higher than the pinions I'm calling them. Um, so this thing will run just sitting on its, on its base. Um, now I've got it turned way down and I've got that freaking screw in there that they put in there. If you look at pictures of these online, like in Victor's, it only comes down about that far. So this is much longer. It seems like, uh, and remember it was broke. So I don't, I don't know what they were doing, but I don't think it's right. So I downloaded an RPM app and put it in the middle. Now I'm slow again, right? I'm, I'm, you see slow. And if I go that way, it does get faster. Um, my RPM thing is telling me like 120 RPM. So it's way too fast. So I'll show you what it's doing. Okay. So if you've messed with phonographs, you know, that's way too fast. So what's going on is this is down so far that it's moved that leg so far out that it allows this to come in so far that it just makes it way too fast. Um, so we need to shorten that screw. I don't know why they, this thing could have never worked right now. There is though, the drag of the needle is going to slow it down some. So, you know, I might have to wait till we actually get the needle on it. Um, I don't know how much that would affect it, but that, you know, they, they track heavy, so it probably does slow it down considerably, but 120 to 78, I don't know about that. They had this screw rigged up in it and it just, it was too fast. It was running too fast because it was pushing this lever down too far. Whenever it pushes that down, it allows the regulator to start turning. I've got it all unwound now. Um, and then this is controlled by where you set the knob. We repaired that. It makes this longer or shorter to speed it up or slow it down. Uh, but the problem is with this screw rigged up in there, it's not right. Now I've seen these before and basically they've got a more like a machine screw in there that can be adjusted. Um, and they usually have a nut on it so that you can lock it in place because when you turn it, you know, if you're turning the head of the screw on the thing, it'll start moving around. It may not actually be a machine screw. It's like a little, I think it has a little ball on the end, but we can use a machine screw. So I'm going to find a screw that will fit in there that's shorter than this thing or that can be installed in there shorter than that thing. I don't think we can go, um, let's see, that's as short as it can get. I just don't think the screw can go in there very far. So it's got to, it's got to stop after, you know, quarter inch wire, three eighths of an inch. Let me see what I got that'll fit in there. So that should be better. That's really similar to how they originally looked on a, like a Victor. I don't know about on a, on a Victrola. I don't know about on a Pathé. Um, but I mean, it looks the same. This is threaded. If you look in there, there's threads and there was a little nut because you want to keep it where it won't move. Um, and that I haven't cut it or anything yet, but I could, I think before it was about like that. So we've taken a considerable amount off. So I'm going to reinstall it again. And then I'm going to check the speed. I've got an app on my phone I can use to check how fast the thing is spinning. And, uh, what I'd like to do is get it to 78 when it's kind of in the middle. So when it's about there to have it near 78 would be good. Okay. So that did get it pretty close. So with it like that, whenever I'm pretty near the middle, I'm right at 78 RPMs. So this is what it looks like going 78 and what it sounds like. It's a little noisy. I think that may just be because it's off balance because of that one weight that we had to re solder. Um, but I can live with that. And it's going to be inside the, uh, the, um, box. We'll see how much that resonates through the reproducer and we'll play a record on it and see if it sounds like it's going to stay steady, but I tested it. We're at 78 RPMs right there. And if I turn it down, I can get it down to like 55, but turn it up. I can get it up to like 95. So it, it's working great. So, uh, I'm glad we were able to save that whenever I saw what that screw sticking out of it, I thought, Oh, but I just happened to have the perfect size screw for it. Okay. So, uh, let's look at the cabinet that I worked on. Okay. So this is how the, um, mahogany turned out. It's pretty much, I mean, it's fairly identical. I think part of it is that the, um, that outside stain, um, even though so Brown, it was, you know, pretty much originally the same color as the inside. So whenever I kind of leaned it that way with that mahogany, um, uh, lacquer, it just took right to it. So you can see the inside outside is very, very similar. This part here is pretty much the same exact color. So it's, it's just, um, much better than it was. Now I didn't get a perfect finish on it because I'm not a cabinet person. You know, I don't really know what I'm doing. Um, someone more talented than me could probably get it much closer, but I think it's pretty good that versus that. I'm a, I'm very happy with it. I think it came out a heck of a lot better than it was. All right. So let's put the soundboard back in it and, uh, let's get a needle and see if it'll play something. All right. So here is the reproducer. We might try to clean it up. Is that a metal? Yeah, it has a metal, uh, diaphragm in it. It's been waxed in and everything. I was able to just slide a new needle into it. And, um, it seems like it's going to be loud as crap. So I used a soft needle and everybody's going to complain. I'm playing this record too. Oh, that's not old enough. I look, you're just going to have to get really angry at me about that because I think that's complete nonsense, but moving right along. Oh, it's electrically recorded. You can't play it on the, you can't play a photograph record from 1935 on a photograph from 1934. They changed all of them. It's just, it seems ridiculous to me, people. That's all I'm saying. All right, folks, moment of truth. She's noisy, but we'll see if she'll play. It's a new needle, by the way. Yeah, we're just outside the groove. Not the greatest record to test it on. All right, so I'm gonna try to speed it up. That is way too fast. All right, let's try a different record. Let's try a little Hank. Well, we've got a problem. The thing doesn't track right. If you look at this diaphragm or this, this reproducer, the needle doesn't sit, you know, square with the reproducer. So it's cocked at an angle and just the physics of it, it does not like that. So you get a better idea of what I'm talking about. See how that is at an angle. I'm going to go grab another one that I've got, not this same brand, but or anything, but I don't think they're supposed to be at an angle like that. I think they're supposed to be perpendicular, parallel, perpendicular. They're supposed to be parallel. This is the one on the Meteor. And it is cocked, but it's, you know, it's in line with the reproducer. We got something wrong. Okay, so I've done some more research. We're going to get all into this, this reproducer on the third video. So see how that's got some play in it. If I'm playing on the record, it's tilted to the side to where it's, it's just the physics aren't right. If you correct that lean though, just a little bit, it plays just fine. So there's something going on with that. So we're going to have to take that off and check it out, try to get the play out of it. And then this doesn't, I can't find this being on a Pathé on any other one. We need to look back at that first video that I was looking at though, just to make sure, but this appears to be a Columbia reproducer. It looks just like the Columbia reproducers. This little ring here, you twist off with the, usually a special tool in these holes, but you can do it other ways too. And you can just see how bad the gasket is. It's all deteriorated. And they've put a metal diaphragm on an aluminum diaphragm, which may work. We might leave that on there. And then this whole piece comes off as well. This little pin here is spring loaded. It's a really nice design. If you turn this, I think you turn it this way. You might turn it the other way, but if you turn this to line it up with here, eventually this will all turn. And you get to a point where there is an indention on the inside where that spring, this is a spring loaded pin, falls down in like a little indention, which allows this to slide off. But it's all kind of seized up right now just because it's dirty. You can see the, the join there, the seam there, right? So I need to soak it in some oil and all of that. So we'll have to mess with that next time. But basically I think we've got the motor running. If I end up ordering parts to rebuild this reproducer, if I have to order parts, I may try to see if the phonograph shop has the correct governor weights for it. I kept calling it the regulator. It's really called the governor. It's kind of the same thing, I guess. But I may order those weights to just see if we can quiet the motor down since it's obviously out of balance. But yeah, so we've got, I don't know if they've replaced this or what. So we're going to take that off and check it out and get all the way to the bottom of it. And I got to try to get this slop out of it, which I think is the main reason that it's, it's hanging canted and won't play a record. So we'll mess with that on the next video. This, it also, when I did get it to play this, it was buzzing, which is a dead sign that you've got, you know, this needs to be rebuilt and you especially need a new gasket. I don't know if I ordered some of those or not. I don't think I did. I ordered some extra stuff, but I don't think I per chance ordered new rubber for this. It, you can hear it. I mean, it amplifies pretty well, but you know, we're not where we need to be. All right. So we'll mess with that next time. I hope you enjoyed the video. Leave your comments down below. Let me know what you think so far, and we will see you next time here on Amateur Repair Time.