Making a Coin Drop


We had an instrument ready to go into our self tour no charge area.   The instruments that play there use a quarter coin to make them play one song.   The Cremona C that was destined to go there, had no coin drop mechanism.   Commercially available ones are way too expensive for our budget, so we decided to make one.   The design is not ours.   It is patterned after our Johnson Nickelodeon, which was built in 1908.

The good thing about this design, is that with some wood, a table saw, a few scraps of copper and some time, it costs almost nothing out of pocket.

You route out the wood to fit the coin, make the two copper parts, one fixed, the other moveable and you are in business.

The coin slides down the slot until the copper parts trap it and at that point the coin itself completes the circuit and starts the instrument.

When the song finishes, the moveable copper part is slid over and the coin is released, breaking the circuit and stopping play.

Of course you have to make a pneumatic to work the moveable piece and get it all to work freely.

The next step is to mount it into the instrument and get the coin to drop onto and into the switch area.

                                                            Repair of the Link AX Part 7

In June of 2017, we moved the Link AX into the shop and started work.   Most of the detailed work is now finished and reassembly started.

You may remember that in our first check, we found that the soft pedal system interfered with the repositioned drum and we left that problem for later.   When we reinstalled the xylophone, we saw the basic problem was that the units were very tight against the case.   I now think that the repositioning of the drum assembly was a factory job or that perhaps the drum assembly was from a different instrument.   At any rate, there is very little room to spare, so we bent the soft pedal bracket to clear the drums.

When we loaded the paper roll, we found the reason the previous roll was so badly edge damaged.   The guides were narrower that the paper.   We repositioned them to give the paper clearance.  The drag plate was warped and did not sit evenly on top of the paper.   We bent it until it fit properly.

The v-belt pullet was installed on the motor and we now have a v-flat drive for the pumps.

There are a few cosmetic items to take care of; but we are about done with this job and all the functions now work.

                                                               Climate Control

When Jake had the collection on Route 8, South of Franklin, the building had no climate control.   A  lot of condensation happened when the conditions were right for it and thus many of the metal parts of the instruments show a degree of rust.

The old G.C. Murphy building, which is our present location, had steam heat and added an A/C system in the 1960s.   We had to replace both of them with a combined roof top unit.

We have done our best to reduce unintended air leakage, but we still have a humidity control issue.   We want about 50% relative humidity, so in the absence of a big humidifier in the winter months, we keep the temperature at 50 degrees and humidify selected machines that show sensitivity.

Summer humidity in the basement required 4 dehumidifiers running full time to get to 50%.   Further investigation found that the foundation was stone cemented in place.   A pegboard  covering with no vapor barrier was exposed.   We started a project to put a vapor barrier in place behind the pegboard to prevent moisture entry.   Over the last 4 years, we have done this in pieces, while also adding base plugs in selected areas while we had the peg board down.   The last 150 feet of the barrier was added this past winter.   While doing this, we found several direct air leaks, which we sealed.  



This picture shows the stone foundation wall, a portion of the vapor barrier and the pegboard cover.

Our success is demonstrated by the fact that we now need only 2 dehumidifiers, one running part time, to consistently maintain the desired 50% humidity.

Aside from the humidity control, this saves us about $20 per month on the electric bill.

                                                REPAIR OF THE LINK AX Part 6


In June of 2017, we moved it into the shop and started work.   Most of the detailed work is now finished and reassembly started.

You may remember that in our first check, we found the soft pedal system interfered with the repositioned drum and we left that problem for later.

The first problem we found was that both the on and off tracker holes were plugged.   That seemed an easy fix; but unplugging them fixed nothing.   So we started at the valves in the bottom leftside and traced hoses.

The #1 hose was plugged someplace, so we started tracing it.   The routing took it behind the valve area.   It was stuck and could not be moved.   Using the air compressor blew a hold someplace.

Pulling would not move it, so we decided to replace it.   Disconnecting from the tracker bar we followed it through the hose bundle on the right side of the case.

We replaced the line from the tracker bar to the valve.   A check showed all was well.   A later check showed it was still plugged, which meant the tracker bar had redeveloped a problem.    Attempts  to clean the nipple yielded more chaff, but also pierced the tracker tube.   We had to solder up the hole.   We then reconnected the tubing and all is well again.





It took longer to do, than to tell the story.