Wurlitzer Gear Standard Accessories

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson)

Tin sheet-metal oil pan for Wurlitzer Direct Drive gear standards. The shiny metal blade sticking up at the left side point of the pan is soldered into a round head machine screw. Under the head of the screw is a gasket, so that when the screw is in place the gasket forms an oil tight seal. This screw plug can be removed to allow oil to drain out of the oil pan into some sort of container. The freshly restored Worm Gear Standard shown here is a type SA B1, from Wurlitzer Style CX Orchestra Piano No. 26743.

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson)

This rather dirty tall open gear standard (with rewind cam trip apparatus) is in Pianino No. 10570. What is of interest here is the little tin sheet-metal oil shield clipped onto the upper lip of the cast iron base enclosure. Painted black, but usually with chipped paint due to careless handling, the shield keeps oil migrating through the high-speed worm gear shaft bearing from being slung out and splattered over the piano sounding board, support shelves, and the furniture case. In this example only one oil shield is needed, because the high-speed shaft is flush with the back side of the gear standard, and so any oil that does seep through this bearing merely oozes down into a rectangular recessed area of the base. For gear standards where the high-speed shaft passes through the gear standard (and then onward to power a vertical direct drive shaft) two tin oil shields would be useful.

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson)

Here is an example of the tin sheet-metal grease pan that encloses the worm/fiber gear set that drives the vertical direct drive shaft. The example is in Wurlitzer Style I, No. 17461.The general mess and surrounding oil stains in the wood are indicative of over zealous use of lubrication, a condition that is typical of unrestored coin pianos once serviced by harried route operators. Unfortunately, these little grease pans were only tacked in place with small brads, making it easy for them to be knocked loose or removed and tossed aside.

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson)

Here is another example of the tin sheet-metal grease pan that encloses the vertical drive shaft worm/fiber gear set—this time in Wurlitzer Style C No. 20006. In this restored Orchestra Piano the gears are clean and lightly but adequately lubricated, and in such cases the grease pan performs as intended. The details of the gear set and their associated wood bearings are easy to see in this goop free example.

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson)

The 5" outside diameter wood pulley was a common fixture in the early de Kleist and Wurlitzer built coin pianos. In this example it looks like once the pulley was basically shaped it was turned on a lathe to cut a "V" shaped belt groove in its outer face. A glimpse of this belt groove can be had by looking at the outside bottom edges of the upper half-pulley. Next the pulley was oriented as to the wood grain, and then it was almost cut in half by a band saw, leaving about 1/2 inch uncut, which kept the future pulley halves together for further processing. The wood-screw holes were drilled, the pulley shellacked, and then the two halves spread apart, breaking the small amount of wood uncut by the band saw. This break is visible by looking at the left side edge of the pulley, and the slight angle as the break-line followed the wood grain. The last operation was to make a recess in each half next to the center hole. This seems to have been hastily and carelessly done by some blunt force chisel tool, gouging the wood away indiscriminately. But all that mattered was that some sort of grove was cut to accommodate a pin driven through the crankshaft stub shaft. Once the pulley was screwed tightly together by two wood screws, clamped to the shaft, the pin in the stub shaft would prevent the pulley from slipping under load—even if it became slightly loose on the shaft.