Saxonia calculator
After restoring my Eureka , which was built by the combined Burkhardt and Saxonia calculator manufacturing companies after 1920, I had to do something about a Catawiki buy from Austria - a proper wood-box Saxonia 2, with the serial number 8284 stamped into the box (but nowhere to be found on the machine) where the only identification are several parts that have just been stamped with a capital "H".The machine as offered for sale looked dirty, but complete - just the wooden box was a bit of a disaster area, and the pictures did not really properly show the extent of the damage, or how bad it was.
To give you an idea, here are pictures of the machine in its original configuration. "Dans son jus", so to say.
So the first thing I did was to take the box apart to see what could be salvaged, and give a call to a friendly wood restorer to see what could be done.
Here's the carnage that resulted - very old label from Fogarty auctions still stuck to the lid of the box.
The machine itself, in the stark light of day
Bottom part of the box, veneer glued back on with hide glue, and large parts missing, base wood completely bent and impossible to take out...
...without destroying the entire box.
The lid, before cleaning
...and after an initial clean-up, decades-old label removed, and clearly showing where it was - already better, but still not great.
Box shipped off to a specialist, then it was time to take a look at the machine itself. It was mostly OK, apart from a slight mistiming of the stepped drum cylinders, which caused it to block when effecting a carry over the full length of the carriage. Since the nickel needed cleaning anyway, and I wanted to keep the patina on the top plate as well as I could, it needed to come apart.
Pinwheel cylinder 6 and 7 from the right are the problematic ones that are mistimed ...
top plate with cursors back together, all squeaky clean:
Testing the carry, and establishing the problem was still there.
A bit of fiddling later, everything was timed correctly, and the machine did no longer block.
But the carriage could use a clean-up as well.
...and so the surgery started by taking everything apart against a clean white background.
The lathe is a great help in quickly and effectively cleaning these up, without getting sore fingers:
Some contrast ...
With everything shiny and clean, it is time to reassemble, which in good tradition is "the reverse of disassembly", of course ...
...that was quick, only the "twirlers" still to clean up, and to assemble them back onto the carriage, all 35 of them...
...there we go
all nice and shiny!
even below decks...
And then it was just a question of waiting until the very pretty box came back from the wood restoration shop, where attention was mainly lavished on conserving the original finish, but cleaning it up, and redoing the bottom of the box to make it functional again and no longer look like it had been ravaged by a colony of rabid beavers.
That, and the turning of the missing knob and decimal markers, and making a new key, concluded the restoration ... enjoy the pictures of the finished product
