by gary »
Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:20 pm
Qmax Record Dinker is available from the Jukeboxman in the uk. see his article below.
There comes a time in every jukebox owners life when you are faced with the necessity to dink.Quite simply dinking is the process of enlarging the hole in the middle of the record so that it can be played in a jukebox. Why is this necessary ? In the U.S.A they have a slightly different system to us when it comes to playing vinyl.Originally when the first 45rpm records were produced they had a large hole made in the centre to designate the speed as 45.The 12 inch albums had a small hole for 33.The early record decks that plugged into your radio were made to promote the large hole and were made to take a stack of the 7inch discs and auto-changed them. Of course the 45rpm jukeboxes were all made to accommodate this system being as they were,made in America.
However and for whatever reasons, we here in the UK had a system with all solid centres so that we could play any speed on our Dansettes!
Records did have pop-out centres making dinking redundant but with reissues and anything past the sixties and you will probably have solid centres.So how do you do it ? I am sure that there are many ways but here are just one or two I have heard about.
Well, you could draw a circle with your kid's school compass, then get out your Black and Decker fret saw, I'm sure we've all seen a few records done in that or similar ways. The problem is that the hole must be dead centre unless you are so tuneless that wow and flutter (variations in speed caused by the non central spinning disc) don't matter. A professional dinking tool is something to search for. Back in the 'old' days such machines were very common as most record stores had one ,tucked away under the counter, and of course in latter years didn't realise what they had and binned it ! They are easy and fast to operate so keep looking - its worth it.
A device appeared not so long ago which can only be described as a scriber and was probably inspired by the kids compass routine. However this has been refined so that the machined end of the tool fits into the centre of the record and the arm sticking out ,which is sharpened,is then pressed into the plastic and turned eventually cutting through the record.Pete assures me the process is speeded up if you attack the record from both sides and that it is important to keep the tool at right angles to the record, particularly at the beginning of the process.If the cut is off-centre to start with it's impossible to get back onto an accurate path leaving yet another spoilt record.The other drawback is physical : do a dozen of these in one evening and you'll feel decidedly limp-wristed the next day !
Next we have the Q-max cutter which is a precision made tool for cutting holes in metal etc so a little bit of plastic does not bother it. Consisting of two parts connected by a threaded bolt.The action is simple -
put the bolt through the centre of the record with one half of the cutter
on one side of the disc and screw on the other half from the other side...but wait a minute ... that sounds easy - Well yes in theory it is..
However, the centre bolt is too wide to pass through the record hole which means that you have to start by reaming the hol so its just big enough. You can use a reamer or careful use of a countersink bit in your drill or (do as our Nursie does) sharpen up the end of the Allen key that you operate the cutter with ; using that as the reamer as it is the correct size. It is essential that the centre hole is not made oversize otherwise you will still not be able to dink centrally. Here at The Jukebox Man I now supply the Q-max with appropriate Alan key sharpened to a point - HEY! only £24.00 including delivery within the U.K. what a bargain !
Next step after enlarging the centre hole (very slightly ) is to keep one half on the bolt on one side of the record and pass the bolt through the plastic.Then you thread the cutter on to the bolt that sticks through the centre.Using the other end of the Alan key you can now tighten the two halves together.It is important to keep going even though you may hear some alarming clicks etc.. The record should now have a large hole centre ready to be played on your juke box. What goes wrong ?
Well I suppose getting the hole too big is number one and number two is certainly that when dinking records without a paper label they tend to break - even with the professional tool. Now this has always annoyed and baffled me but, thanks to a customer, I have a pretty good solution. I used to tell people to warm the cutter up if you were going to do those type of records were the printing is direct on to the plastic and then maybe there would not be so many breakages however just recently a customer came to me and said that he had quite a high success rate when dinking these type of records if he stuck masking tape across the centre first (on both sides) and then dinked them ... O yeah ! ....WELL .... I have tried it and all I can say is - WOW !
