I have lost count now, of how many blank cylinders I have molded, from raw
materials, it is over ten thousand probably approaching seventeen thousand!
This includes experiments, and ones that did not make it. My last project was
for the Buddy Bolden motion picture that is being filmed in Wilmington NC, it
has been in the shooting stage for about 5 years now, and I so far have
supplied over 100 blanks for this project, and the sad part is a majority of
them were smashed in the film and not in the mail, but on purpose! One of my
most favorite, and interesting projects of this year was making 6 blanks of
the kind used to record the 1888 Edison "Trip Around The World", and Edmond
Yates ect, to be displayed on the oldest wax cylinder Edison phonographs made
at West Orange in mid 1887 and 1888, the precursor, to the perfected phonograph
these are of course are at West Orange New Jersey, so if you want to see them
they are there, I really want to see these on the phonograph
s in person, I have seen photographs of them on the machines, and this was
very very exciting, Mr. Fabris told me they are extremely difficult to tell
apart from the originals. My venture in re discovering the wax blanks was a
rather strange trip. The Cylinders I made in 2000 were composed of stearic,
aluminum, dissolved in caustic and paraffin and beeswax for the tempering
agent, I then did not use beeswax in the later part of 2001. I made some
rather strange composition that was just saponafied double pressed stearic,
and I boiled chunks of lead in the caustic, hoping a few particles would go in
the wax, these had no paraffin or ceresin, and the heat of summer caused this
experiments, to decompose, the records were quite hard! Both Ayslworth (Edison)
and Mcdonald (Columbia) made this mistake. I also had a formula of aluminum
stearate paraffin, and pine tar, this was a very brown compound. By 2002 the
composition was back to the aluminum stearate and paraffin, and I
then changed to ceresin as the tempering agent by the end of 2002. By 2003 I
had added sodium carbonate to the wax, and this is very close to the Aylsworth
Edison formula as can be, for records. My one exclusion in all this was that I
had made the wax in an aluminum laboratory warmer, that had a dial that said
400 degrees, however it really only got up to 360 degrees at best, it did the
job, but the wax had to be cooked for a very long time, and the wax slowly took
on more aluminum from the warmer. A few weeks ago, I made my setup more
authentic, by finding a nice little black, cast iron,cauldron, that makes
slightly more wax than the laboratory warmer, that I have used for over 10
years,and a gas camp stove, this heats the wax all the way up to over 400
degrees, and browns the wax, and gives it that slight reddish, orange cast that
you see in most original Edison blanks. The early metallic soap cylinders of
1889 had the aluminum element derived from acetate of alumina
, and this was cooked in lead lined kettles, they soon after changed to a cast
iron cauldron when they did away with the acetate in about 1895. Some
interesting things that Jonas Aylsworth noted when experimenting with the wax
was the quality of stearic acid, he had tried many different brands, and found
that Mitchell's was, at the time the lowest in oleic acid and glycerin, If
either of these two elements are in the phonograph wax, they are apt to cause
fogging, or a leeching of these elements to come to the surface and etch the
records, When there was problems with the cylinders, at the Edison works in the
mid to late 90s, Aylsworth always found the problem to be the stearic, it also
cause tiny bubbles to form in the wax, this was a problem with Proctor and
Gamble stearic, so he told them, to set aside the P&G and use the Mitchell
brand, this was done and the problem solved. Today stearic is not rendered
animal fat, but palmatic acid, or derived from palm oil, instead o
f bovine fat, or tallow as In Edison's day, It does not seem to get as moldy
as the original kind, but is much harder, so the original formula
saponafication suggestions, are way off, and has to be reduced very much,
basically if you add the original amount of aluminum hydroxide and sal soda,
the blanks will become almost as hard as a wax amberol! I have put over 10,000
hours, into experimenting making the formula, every day, more questions arise.
Ceresin was a lignite coal wax originally, and was a refined ozoerite wax.
There is no natural Ceresine made today, it is a ultra high grade paraffinic
wax, the grain structure and flow much finer than paraffinic. Having asked
every wax supplier I can of where I can find these elements, in there original
natural state has basically none of these ingredients are in there original
form! I hope you found my ramble interesting. Thee is only one other fellow,
I know who has as much or more experience making wax blanks, and that is
Paul Morris, my mentor. The whole thing has been enjoyable and painful at the
same time.
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