Musical Wonder House Restoration Services
By Larry Smith
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/___/\__/_/ |___/_/\__/\__/___/ [ Review: [ [ The Musical Wonder [ House Restoration [ Services
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Musical Wonder House Restoration Services
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A Review By Larry Smith
Some time ago I reviewed the Musical Wonder House Museum in Wiscasset, Me. This is a fascinating museum with seven rooms of mechanical music, five of them dedicated to musical boxes, both disk and cylinder - and a few oddball formats as well. I took the "long tour" of the museum, which allowed me three hours to listen to more than a dozen fine instruments. It was, and remains, one of my most treasured memories.
The museum is simply full to the rafters with beautifully restored musical boxes, and when I happened upon an 1860's-era drum-and-bell box that had seen much better days, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to turn to the Musical Wonder House for a similar, museum-quality restoration of it. The proprietor of the museum, Mr. Danilo Konvalinka, has many stories to tell of the piles of broken parts his restorers have made back into gorgeous and satisfying musical boxes - and his lament that they didn't have enough restoration work promised that I'd see the working box sooner than I might with other restorers. All in all, a pretty impressive resume for a restorer. I left off my box with confidence and a large check, and promised a review for the net when it was finished - a process that Mr. Konvalinka estimated at not more than four months.
Well, the box was returned to me this past March - some nine months after it was left at the Musical Wonder House, and it saddens me to report on a fairly mixed bag of results, and more time passed while the box was being sorted out. I will tackle the major issues in separate sections.
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[ Time
As you can tell from the preceding, the box took much longer than the promised four months - and as you will see from the rest of the review, a number of corners were cut anyway. In a way this is the most understandable, but yet the most vexing part of the experience. It is rare in the restoration world to find someone who will quote a definite time - it is entirely too easy to get into a project and discover there are problems that were not detected on simple examination. However, the Musical Wonder House did have the opportunity to completely disassemble the box and examine it thoroughly before committing to an estimate of time, so we must presume that surprises were unlikely and indeed, none were reported back to us at any time. They provided us the estimate with no caveats, readily and in writing - and this is, indeed, one reason why they got the contract. I am annoyed, however, at the idea that the estimate that the Musical Wonder House gives for a project is, in fact, no better than the indeterminate ones obtained from other restorers - I, like most of the people I know, would much prefer an honest plea of indeterminate time, rather than an estimate that is held in little respect and slipped with little regard. The ability to deliver on schedule is one of the things one expects for a premium price - and the Musical Wonder House does charge a premium for its work.
Delays were blamed on subcontractors - mostly the cylinder repinner, though the casework person also apparently took considerably longer than estimated. While the Musical Wonder House appears to have a considerable team behind their work, they, like other restorers, make extensive use of out-of-house workers whose schedules are not driven by the needs of the Musical Wonder House or its custimers, and so they are no better able to commit to firm estimates of time than any other restorer - their estimates should be taken with a very large grain of salt, and not permitted to sway the choice of restorer.
The most annoying part of the experience, however, was the distinct disinterest in correcting the box's problems. My first phone call about problems was dismissed with the claim that all restored boxes made these sounds until the new dampers and pins had been broken in. In the second attempt, I played the box over the phone to Mr. Konvalinka's answering machine, which clearly recorded the problems even through the phone's poor bandwidth, and he called my wife to assure her that he would correct the box, but that he was getting an operation next week and would not be able to work on it until he was back the next week after that. At this point I was not very interested in following up any further, and therefore did not undertake to badger him further, and he had still not called by June - by which time I was scheduled to attend Nancy Fratti's School for Music Box Restoration, which presented a golden opportunity to get the box checked by three of the biggest experts in New England - as it turned out, that was the best decision I could've made.
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[ Case
This drum-and-bell box had obviously spent a lot of time in circumstances not at all conducive to maintaining quality casework. The lid was split, some of the inlay was detached, the finish was, to be charitable, completely shot. I held out the least hope for a "museum quality" restoration for the case.
In this respect, the surprise was a pleasant one. The casework came back late, but when it did, it was absolutely stunning. The box now literally glows a deep golden brown from layers of lacquer, the rich grain of the wood now displayed to a devastating effect. Though it is not a very large box, as musical boxes go, there is no doubt: it dominates the living room, easily overshadowing all the other musical boxes I own, themselves no slouches in this respect. With the single visible defect of a greenish bloom on the lid - the possible result of the time spent in a hot car as the box travelled around in the last few weeks before it was finished and all but invisible except under the correct lighting - there isn't a single blemish I would characterize as such. The lid split could not even be detected.
However, this was not attained at the agreed cost - the casework alone ran to over $1600. This was $700 over budget - and the price included a new base for the piece. While this base is certainly a cosmetic improvement, and probably improves on the sound of the box as well, it was, in fact, completely unauthorized. At no time were we contacted and asked if we wanted - or could even afford - this piece of expensive work. My wife does recall Mr. Konvalinka mentioning "adding the new base" - but nothing was mentioned about additional cost, nor was it mentioned that I had not approved it. Despite the quality of the work, I turn a cold shoulder to a job that runs over budget as well as over schedule. As gov't contracts go, this is small potatoes, but for a strictly small-time enthusiast this could easily have taken the box far enough over budget as to make it impossible to pay when it was done, leaving _both_ parties in a nasty quandary.
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[ Other Mechanisms
A drum and bell box is called that because, in addition to the comb, the box accompanies the music with drums and bells - specifically, in the case of my box, a small snare drum, a castinet, and three bells. These were repaired in a satisfactory manner...Danilo noted, and Nancy seconded, that this box somewhat predated the era when drums and bells were added more as distractions to the music rather than accompaniment to it, and so the use of the percussion effects nicely enhances the arrangements rather then helping to drown them out. Nancy suggested the comb be backed off from the cylinder to soften the sound of the comb and reduce the force of the percussion, which did much to mellow and improve the sound of the box.
It should be noted, however, that The Musical Wonder House did discover the misalignment that was playing the drums and bells for one tune while a totally different tune was playing on the comb, and correctly performed the repair.
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[ Cylinder
This box had suffered a "run" at some point, the explosive release of the entire store of power in the spring to spin the cylinder at a mad speed, which had very badly damaged the pins of the cylinder. Repinning is not a trivial job - it is expensive, and usually done by someone who specializes in such work. It is especially expensive at the Musical Wonder House, whose charge for such work is precisely double the amount charged by other restorers in New England.
It is also, I am sad to report, done far more poorly than I am sure would've been the case elsewhere. After getting the box back from the Musical Wonder House and failing to get satisfaction from them in addressing the various problems being reported here, I took the box to Nancy Fratti at Panchronia Antiquities in White Hall, NY. This happened to be convenient for me, since I was taking her course in musical box restoration at the time - my drum-and-bell box became something of a running gag during the course, and it was frequently referred to as a source of bad examples for the students to avoid emulating. The cylinder came in for the lion's share of these examples.
The following is gleaned from Nancy's examination of the cylinder, which is supported by Joe Roush and Chuck Walker, the teachers of the school and quite gifted restorers themselves, and verified by me, personally, as part of my education in the intricacies of these types of projects.
Repinning involves soaking a cylinder in acid until the pins are desolved, and then replacing each pin, one by one - all several thousand of them. It is very tedious and exacting work. Once this is done, the repinned cylinder must be spun on a lathe and a stone or similar grinding attachment used to perfectly even out every pin so that no pin is shorter or longer than any other. It was here that some of the worst shortcuts were taken.
The cylinder was repinned using larger diameter pins than it had originally - this is not unusual in such work, using a slightly larger diameter helps in the work since the new pin is more likely to friction-fit and stay in place without additional work. It is, however, not the right thing to do if the new pins are going to be larger in diameter than the tips of the teeth on the comb the pins must play. In tight tolerances, like those of this box, this permits the teeth of the next song on the track to scrape the sides of the comb tips as the current song plays, resulting in chirps, burps, and, occasionally, loud squeels. This problem was greatly exacerbated by the fact that the pins were lathed down in a great hurry - under a 10 power loupe, the pins, rather than being perfectly cylindrical bits of wire, looked more like nails, with actual heads on most of them, almost like they had been nailed into position rather than gently inserted. This can result, I am told, from applying the grinder too quickly to the pins - direct strikes can, indeed, thicken the heads of certain pins from the force of impact, and rapid grinding can build up nodules of metal shavings on the pin heads...and both effects were visible on my newly repinned cylinder. The loupe also revealed that the tips had not been polished - a process that takes only a few seconds and, if not done, can result in metal-grinding noises that some can hear as chirps or clicks in the music. These effects were completely masked on my box because of the loud bird cheeps caused by poor dampering and the side-swiping problem noted above drowning them out.
Nancy proved her diagnoses by spinning the cylinder on a lathe and using various types of brushes to remove the worst of the metal shavings from the pin heads...she managed to eliminate all but a few of the impact-thickened pins. Little could be done about these, or the over-sized wire, short of a complete overhaul of the box, but a number of hours of work by Nancy cleaned up the cylinder enough that only an expert could hear the remaining sideswipes. She also polished the pin heads.
Nancy's own repinner will be getting reviewed here sometime in the next few months. It was determined that the box I was working on during Nancy's restoration course had a cylinder that needed repinning. I expect I will see a much better job - especially inasmuch as Nancy does require the tips be polished - and I expect she would be most unhappy at finding pins looking as if they had been nailed in. For that matter, I will also review myself when I am done with the box, but _that_ review should be read bearing in mind that I am not going to be charging myself a great deal of money.
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[ Comb
The comb is the heart of the musical box, it produces the sound and it governs the quality of that sound - and, luckily, the comb required the least amount of work. None of the teeth were missing, nor were any tooth tips - especially good news in view of the fact that, like repinning, the Musical Wonder House wants twice the going rate for such work. All that was needed was redampering.
Dampers are something of a black art in musical boxes, especially in cylinder boxes like this one, though they are not really all that mysterious to the properly initiated. Each tooth is equipped with a tiny bit of thin wire under the tip that is attached at the "anvil" - a spot about an eighth of an inch or so back from the tip - and curved up to not-quite-meet the bottom of the tip of the tooth. As the cylinder rotates and pins come up to the tooth, they first touch this wire, pushing it back as they continue to approach the tip. The pressure of the pin on this wire turns the wire into a little shock absorber, eating up the energy of the vibrating tooth and dampening it down to nothing. Without this feature, the pin might reach the tooth tip as the tooth was still vibrating from the previous note, and the tip could slap the pin a few times before the pin moved enough to begin to lift it, resulting in a nasty metal-on-metal buzz that is heard as a chirp or grunt in play.
The dampering job on this comb was indifferent at best. The wires should each curve around in identical curves, and these did not - some were curved too sharply, delaying contact with the pin or eliminating it completely, others were not curved sharply enough, giving the pin an opportunity to pinch the damper against the tooth tip and adding a "plink" noise to the music. Even worse, two dampers were missing outright, either missed when redampering, or just not firmly pegged enough to avoid being pulled out when the damper was pinched. As I learned that week at class, it isn't hard to do a good dampering job, it simply requires a few hours of dedication, which it seems this comb didn't get.
In short order, another problem was discovered that accounted for some of the odd noises the box was making...the tooth tips were blunted, almost square. This was undeniably the result of a poor job on honing. Tooth tips need to be the right shape - the bottom of the tip should protrude below the top, so that when the tip falls off the tooth it gives a good, clean, pluck. If the tip is at all blunt, then as the tip falls off the tooth, the continued rotation of the pin gives it an opportunity to scrape along the front of the tip as the tooth drops, giving a metallic grinding noise to the note. It appeared that the tip of the comb had been sanded - which is normal procedure for removing wear - but the tips were not honed afterward - an exercise that seldom adds more than half an hour to the comb work but which is absolutely essential for the comb to sound its very best. Again, Nancy spent some time carefully rehoning the tips.
This, like the polishing of the pin tips on the cylinder, is an example of a very minor piece of corner cutting that has an entirely disproportionate effect on the music. I speculate that perhaps these details were fudged because of the pressure my wife brought to bear on the Musical Wonder House to have the box ready for my 40th birthday party - with nine months past, it seemed to her that the box must be _almost_ ready, and it would be a nice surprise for me to get the box back at the party. While this may be an explanation, it is certainly no excuse - especially since the box was _not_ there for my birthday. If this is the case, however, it militates even more against believing in time estimates, or in pressuring the restorer to meet them. It is nevertheless the responsibility of the restorer to do the job right above all else - especially in view of charging a premium price.
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[ Governor
The governor really required little work - but it seems to have gotten less. It had an annoying loud buzz when it went in for restorating, and it had an annoying loud buzz when it came back. While I didn't specifically mention it to Nancy, it annoyed her enough that she pulled out her screwdriver and adjusted the foot of the endless - which eliminated the problem forthwith. Another detail.
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[ Summary
So what is the bottom line? Well, there is one great success here - the quality of the casework. While it does come dear, and one runs the risk of some unauthorized work padding the bottom line, it is so far unequalled in my experience. The piece has presence, there is no doubt. But as to the rest, it is my feeling that the whole thing was distinctly second-rate, not at all on the par with the boxes to be heard in the museum - though it certainly would _look_ at home there.
Now, to be perfectly truthful, I am but lately come to music boxes, but I have developed an educated palate early. Aside from the piercing bird-chirps that are most likely the result of losing two dampers, it is likely that the box would have pleased 90% of the people looking to restore a box. However, that can also be said of the job that virtually any restorer with a modicum of experience can do - and do for half the price or less. When all was said and done, the $3400 estimate had ballooned to nearly $5000, with no warning at all before my wife arrived to pick up the box. Mr. Konvalinka did agree to halve the difference when reminded that this effort was going to be reviewed for the net, so the final bill was approximately $4200. I believe I could have gotten a better job in every particular but case for less than half of that - and I am quite sure the casework - while spectacular beyond a doubt, would be nearly as impressive were it, too, done at half the price - or even less.
It must be said that Mr. Konvalinka's mechanic has the reputation of being capable of extraordinary comb work of the type that was not called for here. All that I talked to spoke highly of combs with myriad broken teeth that were repaired to an extraordinary degree - and this work is visible to the discerning viewer in the machines of the Musical Wonder House - but clearly this caliber of work was not needed on my box, and the actual worker was not as skilled or as meticulous as one would presume from this reputation.
The real success story here, if there is one, is due to Nancy and Panchronia, who found a way to retroactively take care of the missing details, eliminate the piercing bird chirps - and the rumbles, grumbles, and fumbles that were to be heard once they were gone, and turn the box into one that sounds as wonderful as it looks - and did it all for $325 in just two weeks.
The real bottom line is this: if you have a badly damaged comb that needs the best mechanical work, or if you have a box with great potential for beauty under the dust and dirt - and if money is no object - then the Musical Wonder House may still be a good choice. But for me, well...
...the Nicole Freres two tune per turn grand format cylinder box I have but recently acquired is even now sitting in Nancy Fratti's basement at Panchronia Antiquities. I don't know when I'll hear it...at least two years, according to Nancy...but when I get it back I feel certain that it will not need the attention of another restorer. And it will _not_ be the dire threat to my bank account the drum and bell box became.
Danilo Konvalinka Nancy Fratti The Musical Wonder House Panchronia Antiquities p.o.b. 604 - 18 High St. p.o.b. 210 Wiscasset, Maine 04578 White Hall, NY 12887-0210 (207) 882-6373 (518) 282-9770 (voice) (207) 882-7163 (518) 282-9800 (fax)
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(Message sent Wed 24 Jul 1996, 19:22:25 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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