Restored Christmas Gift - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.

Restored Christmas Gift

Back in 1976, my wife’s grandmother gave a box of parts to her son, my wife’s father. The parts were for an old Edison graphophone that was used by their family in the early 1900’s. Included was another box with about 100 wax cylinders with all the songs popular at that time like Old Susanna, Danny Boy, Swanee River, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and Over There. The boxes of parts and cylinders were stashed away in my in-laws basement for a couple years until during one of our visits, I offered to restore the graphophone. The boxes went into our attic, and it wasn’t until I retired some 25 years later that I had time to do the restoration. It became a challenging project, especially after we decided the restored phonograph would be a great Christmas present for my father-in-law from his family. That meant I had a deadline; no more procrastination!

Fortunately, a friend nearby collected old phonographs so he showed me his collection while also taking a look at the parts from my wife’s family’s graphophone. He showed me a catalog from the era indicating the original price was $27 in 1906. He also provided the name of guy in Newaygo, MI nicknamed the Victrola Doctor, who could provide parts if needed.

So with that bit of encouragement, the restoration project was started. The following photographs offer some idea of the mess I had gotten myself into.

The graphophone was powered by a hand crank used to wind up a spring driven mechanism pictured above that was all gunked up with oily sludge, so cleaning that device became the first challenge. According to the Victrola Doctor, the best way to clean it was with a special penetrating fluid used in the airline industry called Aerokriol Penephite that he was more than happy to sell me an aerosol can of the WD40-like stuff for $8.50. It worked like a charm and so with the drive mechanism functioning, I moved on to restoring what was called the cylinder drive and reproducer assembly. It’s pictured below and is belt driven from the spring drive mechanism that rotates the wax cylinders as a small needle in the reproducer picks up the undulations in the wax creating sound that is amplified by a gigantic horn called a cygnet.

Finally, just before Christmas, the restoration was complete. My wife’s siblings had agreed to share in the cost of the restoration, so a couple days before Christmas I emailed them a facetious recap of the expenses that not only included the various parts & supplies totaling $120, but also a labor charge at some exorbitant hourly rate. When told the cost would be $1728 per family, my wife’s siblings politely told me shove it and paid me only $20 each to cover the parts and supplies. My in-laws enjoyed receiving the restored gramophone that Christmas as shown in the photo below. And here’s a video of the graphophone playing a Christmas song. Remember this is 1906 audio quality.