you can also use LIGNUM VITAE wood for the solution to your lubrication problem, as this wood is naturally impregnated with its own oil. Very hard/dense wood, often used in clock making for just this problem, lubricaton.
Yes, I agree, it was used in some of the old wooden clocks, that still run hundreds of years later. It's a very hard oily wood, 4500 on the Janka scale. Graphite will make things black, even if you carefully put it in a hole in the wood, it will work it's way out. You can also try using paraffin, and maybe even melting the paraffin into the wood. I'd think that would last a very long time. I've used paraffin (candle wax) to lubricate the escapement of a wood clock I've made, it's been running for over 5 years now.
Martin - you can do the brass bushing on steel, which would require lubrication, or bare wood with graphite as he said. An alternative is to use a delrin bushing and run it dry. Delrin is easy to work with and self-lubricating.
Martin, before the guy at the museum workshop mentioned graphite, my first thought was “graphite! Use graphite!” And then he mentioned it and stole my glory. Graphite is a very very good lubricant for wooden joints
To lubricate the wooden joint, you would traditionally make the portion from Lignum Vitae. Old wooden clocks used this solution. But it's a pricey wood in short supply. Bronze bushing is one solution; another solution that is also quite good is nylon bushings. Those work great. particularly for low-force operations like you would be doing here. You can get them at any hardware-store or order in bulk to save money.
About the lubrication. When I build furnitures I use paraffin wax to lubricate tight fitting cabinet drawers. Just rub the wood with a non heated regular candle. It does not stain the wood. That would be the first thing that I would try. Good luck!
Or put the paraffin on the wood dowel that runs thru the piece he had in the video. That would be easy. You can maybe even melt it into the wood a bit, I think that would make the lubrication last for many years.
Hearing music plucked from those music machines and boxes just sings to my soul. I love to listen to this sort of music and would be so thrilled to get a music machine of my own. I guess I need to tell the family that's what I want for my next big gift.💝🎶
The Swedish Table? Yes that sound is simply adorable. And now that song is stuck in my head. It's call Flickan hon går i dansen. literally meaning The Girl she walks in the dance. But it has several names all similar, the maiden she walk in the ring, and so on, it's a really old song, about a maiden and it's about the boy she dances with and her and it's a ring dance. Most beautiful of a song. In 1910 a Tenor named Adolf Julius Boruttau translated the lyrics to German, and it became popular there as well. ruclips.net/video/yGJfC_UsukM/видео.html here's a really good accordion version of the song. ruclips.net/video/aOTFQdC6rQg/видео.html Here's a slightly comedic version of the song. ruclips.net/video/c5Mbt1lWWIU/видео.html Here's a choir version that actually is good.
It's funny because I am dutch and I visited this museum too and now you see a special person like you, I feel sort of proud because it is in 'my' country
There are 35 thumbs downs. WHAT ???? What is not to like ? What is the matter with some folks. The carpentry, the mechanical, the musical... Amazing talent just to design such a machine.
This reminds me, I need to update the late Phillippe Rouille's "Musica Mecanica" page on the MMD website, which had a large list of mechanical music museums and attractions in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, which people can visit. Quite a few of the places on the old website have closed (and been sold off) BUT there are still many open (such as this great museum in the Netherlands), and also are many more that have opened up since the website was last updated c. 1998. I'll put a list together and email Robbie and see if he can post up the latest list in case anyone wants to go on a 'mechanical music road trip'.
Looks like that old list may be offline, which is just as well. Here's a slightly newer and more updated list of attractions and museums in the USA featuring mechanical musical instruments (some are large museums, others quite small. Others are a large 'normal' museum with just a very small mechanical music collection): www.mmdigest.com/Links/Museums#selected_table
For your lubrication question, look up John Harrison's wooden clocks. He has made them with a certain type of wood that is self lubricating. The type of wood escapes me but his clocks are still in use today without any maintenance issues.
Enjoyable as usual. For the problem with the lever you might try the compressed hole technique. Since it is used on glulam beams that they build large hangars with it is definitively strong enough for this application. It is pretty simple. Drill a hole that is too small and then press a set of mandrels trough it so the wood around it gets compressed. It sort of hardens the wood. making it suitable as a bearing surface for slow low revolving applications like this. How much you need to compres depends on the type of wood you use. Good luck. Erik.
Martin, I was wondering if perhaps you had seen the Matthias Wandel video on a two-tone bell. Might be pretty cool to have one in the marble machine. Perhaps perhaps attached to the vibrato slider thing under the xylophone; you could attach a spinning bell to it with a hammer activated, say, by a foot pedal. You could also make it interchangeable too.
For lubrication you could use "GRAPHIT 33". It's a graphite based conductive coating for electronics but also works well as a dry lubricant. It comes in a spray can and has a little bit of binder in it so it's easy to use and stays where it needs to be. I use it for mechanisms in rubber band guns and wooden gearboxes.
I love all this videos. I really feel amazed about the amount of musical instruments that were invented and used before electric instruments and music electrical devices were invented.
If you want to use graphite for "dry lubrication" its also sold at hardware stores as a powder in small "nosseled bottles" to lubricate modern locks. You could also try to paint it (furniture paint) and use very fine sandpaper on it, leave the fine dust on it. I have used that on my full pullout drawer made completely from maple and after 10 years its still running smoothly. Though sanding inside the small holes may be painful.
Interesting article as usual. On you pivot problem, The brass tube idea is good and does not take away much material from the part. Another option might be plastic bushings or spacers. They are available in many sizes and materials, but Polyethylene might be best. James
Since the speed of the wheel is regulated by spinning spades that catch the air, the music box would play very differenly in different gas atmospheres. Sounds like a job for Cody's Lab.
Sort of late to the question...but a good choice for a lubricant on wood is also wax. This is used for drawer slides. Having said that it would be better to focus on the real question and that is the "bushing effect"...so the wood is soft compared to the shaft which is metal and you already have a bushing effect in place. If you burnish the wood prior to assembly then the wear is very slight on a metal shaft, and the harder the metal and smoother it is the longer the wood lasts. There is also a real good polishing effect of the wood on the shaft over time and the friction actually decreases as the parts wear in. If you monitor the resistance in the drive it will tell you when to clean the pivot and add the wax to the pivot to slow the burnishing effect increasing lifespan. The down side to graphite is the color and the mess that can result as it bleeds all over the mechanism destroying the visuals...not a great choice from that aspect. It's all about balancing the different effects to arrive at a best choice decision.
The How It's Made segment on disc music-boxes demonstrates (briefly) the machine used to produce the discs. I can't recall the company involved in that segment, but it should be very easy to track down. I do remember, speaking as a metal-worker, that the cutting action used to produce that style of plucker was a tricky sort of cut.
OMG. When that swedish table started playing at 10:38 i was very confused, because it sounded weird due to inconsistant tempo, but then realisation came, as nostalgia flooded me. It sounds so close to a modern day danish drinking song (Vi skåler med vore venner), so much so that i half suspect it is the original inspiration. I was kind of used to all these songs being orchestra style songs, or custom compositions, so when a melody suddenly hit close to home, i was completely blindsided. Thanks for all these videos, and cheers from Denmark.
The song is called Och jungfrun hon går i ringen (And the maiden she walks in the ring), a traditional Swedish singing game. Here is a common arrangement for choir by Hugo Alfven: ruclips.net/video/wBlTLxYAztA/видео.html We also have the drinking song (Vi skålar för våra vänner), which commonly has Jungfrun stated as original melody.
Volgend jaar ga ik ook naar het Speelklok Museum lijkt mij heel leuk. The next year i go also to the Speelklok Museum that seems very interesting to me. Greeting from Lex Amsterdam. NL
Random fact, In the film Labyrinth they wanted a pinned music box to play the theme "as the world falls down" as it was deemed too expensive they punched a disc for the polyphon music box that disc sits in "keith hardings world of mechanical music" in the cotswolds UK. I used to work and live at that museum. Also there was a series of 3 discs punched in the 70s for a cartoon called "Starmouse" sadly it was never aired but the discs are carefully stored there and I'm one of few people to hear that hautingly beautiful melody
Wood can be lubricated with pure paraffin-wax. Its solid, but not as crystaline as stearin. It doesn't make the wood swell, but helps very good to make old drawers slide more easily. ;)
Fun fact: That Kalliope "Panorama" disc musical box isn't the only automatic musical instrument with a racing attachment: The (once) very popular Western Electric "Derby" coin operated piano, made by the Western Electric Piano Co. of Chicago (a secret subsidiary of Seeburg, no relation to the telephone company), featured a small horse-racing diorama with randomized spinning horses, which was started whenever a coin was inserted and a tune started playing, so that bets could be made between friendly people about which horse would 'win' (have its nose nearest to the post when it coasted to a stop). Seeburg themselves also made a version of this called the "Grayhound" which is rare today. Both pianos came out pretty late, around 1925 or so (I think later for the "Grayhound" which is why it's rarer), and were built using the same size 54-note cabinet piano used for the wildly popular Seeburg "L" and Western Electric "C" pianos (which, of course, were just a regular cabinet model coin piano suitable for small spots in public places). The National roll-changing pianos, made in Grand Rapids, Michigan by the Automatic Musical Instrument Company (now the AMI Jukebox company, today), featured an even MORE elaborate dog race machine where the randomizing of the dogs was cued to certain frequently-played notes in the middle of the piano (these were not spinning dogs, but dogs on a kind of endless-belt which go from left to right across the diorama in the front of the piano). Finally, the progenitor of all of these types (at least, where a piano was concerned) was probably the Mills "Race Horse Piano" made by the Mills Novelty Co. of Chicago. This was basically their "Magnetic Expression Piano" coin piano, but with a horse-racing attachment in the front of the piano. This was introduced in 1924 so I think may have come out before the Western Electric, Seeburg and National versions... I *think*. Not sure. I think the racing attachment on that one is a little more like the National (in this case, horses, on their own individual endless belts which 'race' with each other), but I don't really know how it works. They're really rare... only about 7 Race Horse Pianos are known to exist today! (and only a dozen or so, maybe 20, Magnetic Expression Pianos, out of perhaps 200 built as per Mr. Mills). The music on the rolls for that piano is also really fantastic. The way these pianos 'worked' (were legal) is that there was NO payout and NO coin return.. and the piano played a tune every time you put in a coin, so you were still paying for music just like a regular coin piano. Since it didn't work like a regular gambling device, it was considered to be legal in places where real gambling machines (with payouts etc) were quite illegal. At least, in theory. Of course people could and would gamble on anything, and that was the idea of the horse-race (or dog race) device: to give people something to gamble on, on their own. Of course the Kalliope attachment (these attachements are also super rare by the way; regular Kalliope disc music boxes are moderately common but the added horse-race is almost never seen) is way earlier than the piano 'racing games'... like probably about 20 years before that!
Here is a video of a National roll-changing piano with dog race attachment, on display (you can see and hear it) at the Empire State Theatre and Musical Instrument Museum in Syracuse, New York. As you can see from the start of the video, there is an additional chain and two sprockets in the system which drive a Geneva-motion stopwork rotary valve, which helps 'randomize' the dog triggers, connecting them I think either with different notes on the piano, or else with the same note, but intermittently, so that even playing the same tune over and over again will NOT cause the same racing result. Very clever! As this system added additional complication to the already complicated National mechanism (this instrument allows the patron to select any one of 8 single-tune music rolls, using 8 different coin slots and a 'ferris wheel' roll changer), there are very few of them in existence today and this is the only one I know about with the dog race that's in a public museum (not in a private collection): ruclips.net/video/OigZ0ctq0hc/видео.html
Well, Martin, I now know what kind of automata I would like to build during my life time. Of course the only logical thing to build is to continue the craftsmanship of Swedish tables. The possibilities are endless, especially if I can get school kids to do it for me! No, but really, I would love to own one, and I bet they go for a hefty sum on the rare occasion that they are up for sale.
loving music machine Mondays. If you run out of music machines you could toss in a few marble machine Mondays. there are plenty of massive marble machines to check out!
Martin, use a teflon bushing. No lubrication is required. Graphite works but it is messy. And with moisture (condensation), you'll have an ink that stains.
@@CBF1 Quality things take time. It's not like he can have a factory manufacture 10,000 marble machines in a week. The time it takes to make the machine and the amount of parts that have to be made are why I like watching the long build process.
large music box: about 40s for half a turn of an (approx.) 70mm drum . I make that about 7mm/s . Those trills appear to be at least 10 per second , so pin spacing could be
graphite is a pretty good solution, but tends to get fairly messy, and maybe not as good of a long term solution as using a bearing or bushing, and keeping those lubricated. another idea would be to have a nylon based plastic bushing, it may need less lubrication than a brass bushing. i've seen a lot of soft plastic bushings inside toys and more simple machines, like on a lid to a tape deck or cd player, those usually have a steel pin on the lid with a soft plastic bushing. also, the swedish table at the end, i absolutely love the idea of mechanising an instrument like a hammer dulcimer or a kantele. i might have to do something about making one...
I was thinking of owning a music box for Mili's music, "String Theocracy" I heard of R3 Music Boxes' composition of it, and it sounds beautiful. Made me want to own that exact music box.
Molybdenum dry lubricant is considered better than graphite. You can also get dry Teflon spray which is much cleaner. Graphite and moly are quite dirty to use.
Man, the people who made these things must've gotten Insomnia from making them. I can't imagine making a single one to be easy, even with the assistance of modern technology, which the builders probably didn't have access to.
@At Ikiro I had such a music box as kid, given to me as a present. It was a much cheaper version (of course), but it sounded great. This was in the seventies, a few years before the first introduction of the walkman. I feel grateful for the experience of growing up with these old fairytale-like things in a fast changing world. Did you know, that even to his day, whole generations of Dutch people still hear this wonderful nostalgic music? It is a part of our collective memory, because we hear it whenever we visit the famous fairytales theme park 'De Efteling'.
For lubrication you can use bees wax or candle wax. Bees wax may be preferable for the new marble machine, because bees wax is a bit harder, tougher, and has a higher melting point than candle wax. I once used it for a replica of an early lens grinding machine and it worked FAR better than I thought it would work !! Another advantage is that both are cheap and available everywhere. No chemicals are involved, it's odourless and last a VERY long time. The volume/quantity of one candle (+- 100cc ) will last for many many years. Who needs modern lubrication materials...???!!! ;-)
These videos are always so interesting to watch. I had never heard of this Museum before watching these videos and now I really really want to go there sometime. Thanks for posting these videos.
There is a wood called lingum vitae and it is a oily wood and Ben Harrison used the wood on his clocks and they are still working after 200 hundred years later and you might want to try that wood for bearings and bushings on your latest marble machine.
There are certain timber species that self lubricate. You could use a Gidgee piece of timber as a hinged joint on a steel wire. Would never wear out. Review also Babbidge and his wonderful precise clocks that had wooden gears and bearings.
you can also use LIGNUM VITAE wood for the solution to your lubrication problem, as this wood is naturally impregnated with its own oil. Very hard/dense wood, often used in clock making for just this problem, lubricaton.
Yes, I agree, it was used in some of the old wooden clocks, that still run hundreds of years later. It's a very hard oily wood, 4500 on the Janka scale. Graphite will make things black, even if you carefully put it in a hole in the wood, it will work it's way out. You can also try using paraffin, and maybe even melting the paraffin into the wood. I'd think that would last a very long time. I've used paraffin (candle wax) to lubricate the escapement of a wood clock I've made, it's been running for over 5 years now.
Martin - you can do the brass bushing on steel, which would require lubrication, or bare wood with graphite as he said. An alternative is to use a delrin bushing and run it dry. Delrin is easy to work with and self-lubricating.
Martin, before the guy at the museum workshop mentioned graphite, my first thought was “graphite! Use graphite!” And then he mentioned it and stole my glory. Graphite is a very very good lubricant for wooden joints
If this guy loves such music machines, then he should make his own epic machine and then go on a world tour.
To lubricate the wooden joint, you would traditionally make the portion from Lignum Vitae. Old wooden clocks used this solution. But it's a pricey wood in short supply. Bronze bushing is one solution; another solution that is also quite good is nylon bushings. Those work great. particularly for low-force operations like you would be doing here. You can get them at any hardware-store or order in bulk to save money.
Wintergatan Wednesday Last Week = Week of sleep for the team I hope!!!
I KNOW RIGHT?
MinecraftRocks right, I hope so too
Not good to week of sleep
About the lubrication. When I build furnitures I use paraffin wax to lubricate tight fitting cabinet drawers. Just rub the wood with a non heated regular candle. It does not stain the wood. That would be the first thing that I would try. Good luck!
Multitwisting It has to be a VERY small candle though 😉
birthday cake candles, perhaps.
Or put the paraffin on the wood dowel that runs thru the piece he had in the video. That would be easy. You can maybe even melt it into the wood a bit, I think that would make the lubrication last for many years.
A brass bushing was the first choice of the professional.
The tip I learned for lubricating timber drawers was to rub with a bar of plain bath soap.
Please make more videos! I'm hooked to everything on this channel!
Hearing music plucked from those music machines and boxes just sings to my soul. I love to listen to this sort of music and would be so thrilled to get a music machine of my own.
I guess I need to tell the family that's what I want for my next big gift.💝🎶
I've visited this museum a couple of times now, and am each time enchanted by all of the wonderful things inside!
awww that sound!
It's so adorable and pure. ^_^
The Swedish Table?
Yes that sound is simply adorable.
And now that song is stuck in my head.
It's call Flickan hon går i dansen. literally meaning The Girl she walks in the dance.
But it has several names all similar, the maiden she walk in the ring, and so on, it's a really old song, about a maiden and it's about the boy she dances with and her and it's a ring dance.
Most beautiful of a song.
In 1910 a Tenor named Adolf Julius Boruttau translated the lyrics to German, and it became popular there as well.
ruclips.net/video/yGJfC_UsukM/видео.html here's a really good accordion version of the song.
ruclips.net/video/aOTFQdC6rQg/видео.html Here's a slightly comedic version of the song.
ruclips.net/video/c5Mbt1lWWIU/видео.html Here's a choir version that actually is good.
I second the graphite recommendation. My relative builds keyed fiddles (nyckelharpa) and he uses a pencil for lubricating the sliding surfaces.
Wow Martin this was so rad! And you were so humble when asking for advice from that guy! 👌🏻
My auntie has an old glockenspiel metal disc Christmas tree music box. It was awesome fun as kids to watch and listen to, on Christmas Day.
I always give a thumbs up before I watch.
Me too. Never regret.
Make Build Modify same here
Who wouldn't?
Make Build Modify
the culture of millenials
Me too!
It's funny because I am dutch and I visited this museum too and now you see a special person like you, I feel sort of proud because it is in 'my' country
I once delivered two special main springs there and had a tour of the museum and the workshop, just a short walk away. Geweldig.
There are 35 thumbs downs. WHAT ???? What is not to like ? What is the matter with some folks. The carpentry, the mechanical, the musical... Amazing talent just to design such a machine.
Hurrah! How pleasant is the sound of melodies played by music-box. The music-box is beautiful too!
I need to go to this place asap
Lola Lea its in holland
Yes, it's in the Netherlands. But it's actually open for the public every first Wednesday of the month ;)
www.museumspeelklok.nl/lang/en/
This reminds me, I need to update the late Phillippe Rouille's "Musica Mecanica" page on the MMD website, which had a large list of mechanical music museums and attractions in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, which people can visit. Quite a few of the places on the old website have closed (and been sold off) BUT there are still many open (such as this great museum in the Netherlands), and also are many more that have opened up since the website was last updated c. 1998. I'll put a list together and email Robbie and see if he can post up the latest list in case anyone wants to go on a 'mechanical music road trip'.
Looks like that old list may be offline, which is just as well. Here's a slightly newer and more updated list of attractions and museums in the USA featuring mechanical musical instruments (some are large museums, others quite small. Others are a large 'normal' museum with just a very small mechanical music collection): www.mmdigest.com/Links/Museums#selected_table
For your lubrication question, look up John Harrison's wooden clocks. He has made them with a certain type of wood that is self lubricating. The type of wood escapes me but his clocks are still in use today without any maintenance issues.
These must sound amazing in person! Precision is paramount.
The acoustics are so impressive.
Enjoyable as usual. For the problem with the lever you might try the compressed hole technique. Since it is used on glulam beams that they build large hangars with it is definitively strong enough for this application. It is pretty simple. Drill a hole that is too small and then press a set of mandrels trough it so the wood around it gets compressed. It sort of hardens the wood. making it suitable as a bearing surface for slow low revolving applications like this. How much you need to compres depends on the type of wood you use. Good luck. Erik.
Martin, I was wondering if perhaps you had seen the Matthias Wandel video on a two-tone bell. Might be pretty cool to have one in the marble machine. Perhaps perhaps attached to the vibrato slider thing under the xylophone; you could attach a spinning bell to it with a hammer activated, say, by a foot pedal. You could also make it interchangeable too.
Finn Driver I was thinking the same!
i saw it, so cool!
Finn Driver hé is my dad, i van ask him tot look that video !
Thanks so much for bringing us this behind the scenes peek into the museum. Someday I hope I will travel from Canada to see it in person.
This is a great museum, I've done the public tour before but it's wonderful to get a peak behind the scenes
For lubrication you could use "GRAPHIT 33". It's a graphite based conductive coating for electronics but also works well as a dry lubricant. It comes in a spray can and has a little bit of binder in it so it's easy to use and stays where it needs to be. I use it for mechanisms in rubber band guns and wooden gearboxes.
I love all this videos. I really feel amazed about the amount of musical instruments that were invented and used before electric instruments and music electrical devices were invented.
Fantastic!
If you want to use graphite for "dry lubrication" its also sold at hardware stores as a powder in small "nosseled bottles" to lubricate modern locks. You could also try to paint it (furniture paint) and use very fine sandpaper on it, leave the fine dust on it. I have used that on my full pullout drawer made completely from maple and after 10 years its still running smoothly. Though sanding inside the small holes may be painful.
You can press a bronze bushing into the hole of the plywood part and use any available lubricant for the axle-bushing friction pair.
The Speelklok and mechanical instruments world would not be interesting enough without you Martin! Looking forward to see the new marble machine X.
Those are some really special tunes. Gotta love them man!! Cheers!
I really enjoy all your videos and to see the old machines work and playing there songs is great
Interesting article as usual. On you pivot problem, The brass tube idea is good and does not take away much material from the part. Another option might be plastic bushings or spacers. They are available in many sizes and materials, but Polyethylene might be best.
James
I waited for this video all the day !
I was a bit disappointed when there wasn't a wintergatan Wednesdays episode last week. As always, im looking forward to this episode.
Since the speed of the wheel is regulated by spinning spades that catch the air, the music box would play very differenly in different gas atmospheres. Sounds like a job for Cody's Lab.
Always so nice to watch your videos. You make great unique content, keep it up! ❤
Sort of late to the question...but a good choice for a lubricant on wood is also wax. This is used for drawer slides. Having said that it would be better to focus on the real question and that is the "bushing effect"...so the wood is soft compared to the shaft which is metal and you already have a bushing effect in place. If you burnish the wood prior to assembly then the wear is very slight on a metal shaft, and the harder the metal and smoother it is the longer the wood lasts. There is also a real good polishing effect of the wood on the shaft over time and the friction actually decreases as the parts wear in. If you monitor the resistance in the drive it will tell you when to clean the pivot and add the wax to the pivot to slow the burnishing effect increasing lifespan. The down side to graphite is the color and the mess that can result as it bleeds all over the mechanism destroying the visuals...not a great choice from that aspect. It's all about balancing the different effects to arrive at a best choice decision.
You can get graphite in the locksmith shop in little bottles - it is used to lubricate locks. That is simpler than using a pencil.
I wanna make a table like that myself nicee
The How It's Made segment on disc music-boxes demonstrates (briefly) the machine used to produce the discs. I can't recall the company involved in that segment, but it should be very easy to track down. I do remember, speaking as a metal-worker, that the cutting action used to produce that style of plucker was a tricky sort of cut.
OMG. When that swedish table started playing at 10:38 i was very confused, because it sounded weird due to inconsistant tempo, but then realisation came, as nostalgia flooded me. It sounds so close to a modern day danish drinking song (Vi skåler med vore venner), so much so that i half suspect it is the original inspiration. I was kind of used to all these songs being orchestra style songs, or custom compositions, so when a melody suddenly hit close to home, i was completely blindsided. Thanks for all these videos, and cheers from Denmark.
The song is called Och jungfrun hon går i ringen (And the maiden she walks in the ring), a traditional Swedish singing game. Here is a common arrangement for choir by Hugo Alfven: ruclips.net/video/wBlTLxYAztA/видео.html
We also have the drinking song (Vi skålar för våra vänner), which commonly has Jungfrun stated as original melody.
Volgend jaar ga ik ook naar het Speelklok Museum lijkt mij heel leuk.
The next year i go also to the Speelklok Museum that seems very interesting to me.
Greeting from Lex Amsterdam. NL
lexpee Ben er 2 jaar terug geweest. Echt een aanrader!
die gozer in het filmpje praat echt typisch nederlands engels
Random fact, In the film Labyrinth they wanted a pinned music box to play the theme "as the world falls down" as it was deemed too expensive they punched a disc for the polyphon music box that disc sits in "keith hardings world of mechanical music" in the cotswolds UK. I used to work and live at that museum. Also there was a series of 3 discs punched in the 70s for a cartoon called "Starmouse" sadly it was never aired but the discs are carefully stored there and I'm one of few people to hear that hautingly beautiful melody
so yes you can pin modern music for these ancient machines
Wood can be lubricated with pure paraffin-wax. Its solid, but not as crystaline as stearin. It doesn't make the wood swell, but helps very good to make old drawers slide more easily. ;)
I fangirl scream, looking at those music boxes
Fun fact: That Kalliope "Panorama" disc musical box isn't the only automatic musical instrument with a racing attachment:
The (once) very popular Western Electric "Derby" coin operated piano, made by the Western Electric Piano Co. of Chicago (a secret subsidiary of Seeburg, no relation to the telephone company), featured a small horse-racing diorama with randomized spinning horses, which was started whenever a coin was inserted and a tune started playing, so that bets could be made between friendly people about which horse would 'win' (have its nose nearest to the post when it coasted to a stop).
Seeburg themselves also made a version of this called the "Grayhound" which is rare today. Both pianos came out pretty late, around 1925 or so (I think later for the "Grayhound" which is why it's rarer), and were built using the same size 54-note cabinet piano used for the wildly popular Seeburg "L" and Western Electric "C" pianos (which, of course, were just a regular cabinet model coin piano suitable for small spots in public places).
The National roll-changing pianos, made in Grand Rapids, Michigan by the Automatic Musical Instrument Company (now the AMI Jukebox company, today), featured an even MORE elaborate dog race machine where the randomizing of the dogs was cued to certain frequently-played notes in the middle of the piano (these were not spinning dogs, but dogs on a kind of endless-belt which go from left to right across the diorama in the front of the piano).
Finally, the progenitor of all of these types (at least, where a piano was concerned) was probably the Mills "Race Horse Piano" made by the Mills Novelty Co. of Chicago. This was basically their "Magnetic Expression Piano" coin piano, but with a horse-racing attachment in the front of the piano. This was introduced in 1924 so I think may have come out before the Western Electric, Seeburg and National versions... I *think*. Not sure. I think the racing attachment on that one is a little more like the National (in this case, horses, on their own individual endless belts which 'race' with each other), but I don't really know how it works. They're really rare... only about 7 Race Horse Pianos are known to exist today! (and only a dozen or so, maybe 20, Magnetic Expression Pianos, out of perhaps 200 built as per Mr. Mills). The music on the rolls for that piano is also really fantastic.
The way these pianos 'worked' (were legal) is that there was NO payout and NO coin return.. and the piano played a tune every time you put in a coin, so you were still paying for music just like a regular coin piano. Since it didn't work like a regular gambling device, it was considered to be legal in places where real gambling machines (with payouts etc) were quite illegal. At least, in theory. Of course people could and would gamble on anything, and that was the idea of the horse-race (or dog race) device: to give people something to gamble on, on their own.
Of course the Kalliope attachment (these attachements are also super rare by the way; regular Kalliope disc music boxes are moderately common but the added horse-race is almost never seen) is way earlier than the piano 'racing games'... like probably about 20 years before that!
Here is a video of a National roll-changing piano with dog race attachment, on display (you can see and hear it) at the Empire State Theatre and Musical Instrument Museum in Syracuse, New York.
As you can see from the start of the video, there is an additional chain and two sprockets in the system which drive a Geneva-motion stopwork rotary valve, which helps 'randomize' the dog triggers, connecting them I think either with different notes on the piano, or else with the same note, but intermittently, so that even playing the same tune over and over again will NOT cause the same racing result. Very clever!
As this system added additional complication to the already complicated National mechanism (this instrument allows the patron to select any one of 8 single-tune music rolls, using 8 different coin slots and a 'ferris wheel' roll changer), there are very few of them in existence today and this is the only one I know about with the dog race that's in a public museum (not in a private collection): ruclips.net/video/OigZ0ctq0hc/видео.html
Well, Martin, I now know what kind of automata I would like to build during my life time. Of course the only logical thing to build is to continue the craftsmanship of Swedish tables. The possibilities are endless, especially if I can get school kids to do it for me! No, but really, I would love to own one, and I bet they go for a hefty sum on the rare occasion that they are up for sale.
loving music machine Mondays. If you run out of music machines you could toss in a few marble machine Mondays. there are plenty of massive marble machines to check out!
Martin, use a teflon bushing. No lubrication is required. Graphite works but it is messy. And with moisture (condensation), you'll have an ink that stains.
In the case of lubrication, you could check out some piano designs. They usually use a felt strip as bushing and/or, soap to lubricate the joints
Great video and great information from an expert!
awesome!
Why don't more people watch your videos, Wintergatan? You're awesome! Hope the Marble Machine X is going well.
No offense but it might be because he has taken around 2 years to build...
@@CBF1 Quality things take time. It's not like he can have a factory manufacture 10,000 marble machines in a week. The time it takes to make the machine and the amount of parts that have to be made are why I like watching the long build process.
@@cameronmcgehee I know. Sure it may be a long wait but it will be worth the wait to see the MMX finished...!
You hear his Dutch accent I love it. Im Dutch myself and visited the Marble Machine. :)
Cada que veo un video nuevo veo más desgastado a éste genio... Duerme más hermano te admiro y admiro tu pasatiempo favorito pero duerme hermano XD
Cada vez se parece mas a mick jagger de joven XD
Yo lo veo bastante bien...
Wow! Amazing
Thank you for sharing your experiences
Woaw, my parents have an G&W Andersson table! I havent really thought about that untill I saw this video. =)
large music box: about 40s for half a turn of an (approx.) 70mm drum . I make that about 7mm/s . Those trills appear to be at least 10 per second , so pin spacing could be
Dat table iz amazing
beautiful sound!
The graphite would be a good idea. you can buy tubes of it already ground up. Sometimes you can even find it at an automotive parts store.
I love music machine mondays!!! It's so positive and interesting, thank you!
For the bearing solution, maybe a teflon insert. Its self lubricating and is very good machinable
Very interesting. I love mechanical instruments.
you could also use hard soap for lubrication, you can rub it on wood surfaces for sliding.
Tobacco sniff box is like an old fashioned 'buy my mixtape'
Love this series as there isn’t anything else quite like it.
Porter Music box company still DOES make this style of music box.... it's really quite beautiful.
Yes, made in Vermont. They're kind if the spiritual heirs to the old Regina Music Box Company of New Jersey.
graphite is a pretty good solution, but tends to get fairly messy, and maybe not as good of a long term solution as using a bearing or bushing, and keeping those lubricated. another idea would be to have a nylon based plastic bushing, it may need less lubrication than a brass bushing. i've seen a lot of soft plastic bushings inside toys and more simple machines, like on a lid to a tape deck or cd player, those usually have a steel pin on the lid with a soft plastic bushing.
also, the swedish table at the end, i absolutely love the idea of mechanising an instrument like a hammer dulcimer or a kantele. i might have to do something about making one...
who's quarantine rewatching of music machine monday here.
I was thinking of owning a music box for Mili's music, "String Theocracy"
I heard of R3 Music Boxes' composition of it, and it sounds beautiful.
Made me want to own that exact music box.
Molybdenum dry lubricant is considered better than graphite. You can also get dry Teflon spray which is much cleaner. Graphite and moly are quite dirty to use.
You can even make little roller bearings with graphite rods
WHOA!! that's so cool! They all look so intricate..
Beautiful
i'm so glad he said graphite because that came into my head too. the first idea was great aswell.
Oh my God! I remember my granddad having this in their house! I didn't know it was a music machine! Darn it.
A pleasure to watch as always!
Man, the people who made these things must've gotten Insomnia from making them. I can't imagine making a single one to be easy, even with the assistance of modern technology, which the builders probably didn't have access to.
I guess having a music box in your snuff box was an early Walkman? Whoever owned this was definitely the coolest kid on the stage coach.
@At Ikiro I had such a music box as kid, given to me as a present. It was a much cheaper version (of course), but it sounded great. This was in the seventies, a few years before the first introduction of the walkman. I feel grateful for the experience of growing up with these old fairytale-like things in a fast changing world. Did you know, that even to his day, whole generations of Dutch people still hear this wonderful nostalgic music? It is a part of our collective memory, because we hear it whenever we visit the famous fairytales theme park 'De Efteling'.
We visited the museum yesterday in Utrecht! Great fun!
Something about that Swedish table sounded like listening to a snapshot of history.
Go with brass or copper bushes. They'll last for ever...almost :-)
Thank's a lot, that's awsome!
For lubrication you can use bees wax or candle wax. Bees wax may be preferable for the new marble machine, because bees wax is a bit harder, tougher, and has a higher melting point than candle wax.
I once used it for a replica of an early lens grinding machine and it worked FAR better than I thought it would work !!
Another advantage is that both are cheap and available everywhere. No chemicals are involved, it's odourless and last a VERY long time. The volume/quantity of one candle (+- 100cc ) will last for many many years.
Who needs modern lubrication materials...???!!! ;-)
Nice video. I love your music and im really happy that i finall subscribed
OK, Martin, when you figure out how to make the disks, the Marble Machine Song *has* to be the first one!
Good video!!!!!!!!
Awesome
es increíble ver funcionando estas máquinas maravillosas, causan una indescriptible emoción verlas y escucharlas.
These videos are always so interesting to watch. I had never heard of this Museum before watching these videos and now I really really want to go there sometime. Thanks for posting these videos.
If these things sound beautiful from a RUclips video on some generic speakers, imagine how it'll sound in real life!
There is a wood called lingum vitae and it is a oily wood and Ben Harrison used the wood on his clocks and they are still working after 200 hundred years later and you might want to try that wood for bearings and bushings on your latest marble machine.
Thats a funny way to say music box.
I like them though. Barely 30 seconds of playtime, but sound great.
There are certain timber species that self lubricate. You could use a Gidgee piece of timber as a hinged joint on a steel wire. Would never wear out. Review also Babbidge and his wonderful precise clocks that had wooden gears and bearings.
You can lubricate wood on wood surfaces with bees wax, or even candle wax.