[ Ref. 041126 MMDigest]

It's interesting that the cylinder could still be good with the
governor removed -- you're lucky.  I'm assuming that it's not all that
you're missing, but the best I can do is offer a couple of suggestions:

Buy a box that has suffered a terrible run.  Take the parts that are
missing from it.

Meshing the spring barrel to the cylinder drive gear is more difficult
than it looks -- I know; I've tried.  You may be better off if you plan
on replacing the cylinder drive gear to match your spring barrel once
you find it.

I had to find a replacement spring barrel and didn't want to replace
the gear.  I went through about 50 spring barrels before I found one
that meshed.  By luck it also had a bridge, the ratchet, gears, etc.;
in short, a complete set, and it was a perfect fit for my box.

The governor: I bought another box that that had a governor appropriate
in age, but not to the box.  The first gear didn't mesh with the great
wheel of the cylinder (at least I don't believe that it did, but I had
to have the great wheel rebuilt so it wasn't a big story.)

I had a new great wheel built -- I don't recommend this course if you
can avoid it; usually it's easier to replace the first gear of the
governor -- and had to drill a new hole in the bedplate to accept the
screw, then drill 2 holes in the bottom of the governor to place set
pins.

The detent was another story: the hole from the original detent was
off-center, so I cut a new piece out of sheet brass and shaped it to
as close to original as possible.  You'd never notice it unless you
knew to look at it.

Also, this box came with a spring barrel, but no bridges or arbor (or
cover!).  Here again, I went through about 40-50 sets of bridges until
I found two that would almost work.  The problem was that the centers
were not aligned; I had to raise one of them slightly.  Again, I took
a piece of sheet brass, cut it to shape, and filed it to the correct
thickness and soldered it under the lower bridge.  Again, a perfect fit
(and a lot of work), but no one would ever notice it.

Best advice: buy a similar box for spare parts, take the mechanism to
one of the old-time restorers and look through their parts and trade
parts with them if what you bought doesn't fit (and it probably won't).

Eli Shahar