Some more bits and pieces of work this time, mostly leather work.
Yesterday was spent colour-testing the dye with some scraps first. The bottom piece is vegetable tanned leather without dye. The middle piece is with one light coat of dye. The top piece is thoroughly soaked with the same dye. The white balance in this photo is a bit weird – but the top one is the winner. It’s a yellow alcohol-based dye.
Then the remaining pieces were cut and dyed, the hardware is in, and the insert for the handle is formed. (At this stage, nothing was glued, since the leather was still wet.) The binder clips are there to shape the leather around the small piece of 2 mm thick leather inside the handle that creates the shape. The irregularity in the colour is due to the fact that the dye hasn’t finished drying yet.
All the stitching is done, and the handle is burnished. The handle and tabs are 2 mm leather, and the straps are 1.3 mm thick, give or take. I’ll punch the hole in the strap when it’s all assembled so as to ensure that it’s in the right place.
The above photo shows grease-proof paper glued to the inside of the bottom casing. This will protect the interior from any grease or oil that drops off the drivetrain. This is a pretty safe assumption, looking at the black grease stains that are there already.
The paper is cellulose-coated baking paper, and it’s glued in with water-based bookbinders glue. Once it’s dry (tomorrow), the white color will become transparent. Then I’ll put in another piece that wraps around the sidewall, since the player will often be set on its end.
In addition to this, the blocks of wood are ready to be inserted – almost all of them cut out of 10 mm thick beech. Instead of the canvas, I plan on using a 5 mm thick strip of beech, but this will have to be steam-bent to follow the curve of the top. We’ll see how well that works out – never tried steam-bending wood before… these will all be held in place with M3 Chicago Bolts with the non-slotted nut on the outside of the case. This will look almost exactly like the original rivets, but it will mean that everything will be much easier to disassemble in the future – just in case…
The new mainspring arrived in the mail today from Lindholts; it looks like it might need a couple of small modifications to work, but it’s a much better fit than the one I had on hand. So the next big days will be spent re-assembling the drive train and inserting the wood parts.
One small setback today. I found the right-shaped screws (to replace the random ones that were holding it together) at Birger A. Handel in Slagelse. The right shape – but the wrong colour. They’re brass, and the originals are all either nickel- or chrome-plated. A found a nickel-plating company near here in Herning, but they emailed me today to tell me that they’re not interested in plating 30 tiny screws for me. Not much profit in that I guess… Oh well. Hopefully, some day, I’ll find replacement screws. Until then, my Lido will be a lovely chrome / brass burst of colour!