Music Boxes
By Larry Smith
Reuge makes very nice modern boxes, but they want a _lot_ of money for them. I rather like the arrangements they have on the 72-note cylinder movements, and so I bought a couple of these movements for about $300-something each from Nancy Fratti (who will, I'm sure, be glad to give you the current price if you ask) and started looking for a nice antique jewelry box or other small box to convert - I plan to build my own boxes eventually, but my workshop seems to move back in time as fast as I go forward, so I was hoping to find a couple nice old antiques that could be converted to musical boxes with a bit of elbow grease. As luck would have it - there were none I could find in several days of looking. At this rate I'd get my own done faster, so I gave up the idea, until I noticed a rather nice, small, cherry, jewelry box for sale at Sears in the engraving department. It's just a bit large for the Reuge 72-note movement in the front-to-back direction, but it an ideal width and height, and is a very nice little box. I bought two for $40 and spent another $40 doing some fancy engraving on the plate on top, took them home and placed a Reuge movement in the center bottom. I scored all around the felt, rubbed the movement back and forth on the felt to score the keyway access, and use a fine nail to score the three mounting holes. Then I deepened the scores through to the wood, removed the felt, and drilled out the holes, and mounted the movements in the boxes. I bought eight toy wheels from a wood-working shop spare-parts bin and glued them on the bottom to make feet high enough to let the key clear - I brought them in a bit so I didn't need to bother finishing them - and then attached the tune sheet to the inner lid, and touched up the somewhat lackadaisical job on the remain- der of the felt.
Well, the operation was a complete success, the movement sounds _very_ nice, and the box looks very nice as well, but the big surprise is how much sound the movement puts out from the box - it sounds every bit as good as the same movement in a fancy Reuge case, fully as loud and as resonant - especially with the lid down. It's really quite nice with the special engraving as well. Very little labor and a pair of nice, personalized, boxes for not a lot of money. Thought some folks might still have a chance to try it before Christmas...
regards,
Larry Smith |
(Message sent Mon 11 Dec 1995, 15:30:46 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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