Carousel figurine disassembly
There are hundreds of different styles of carousel figurines so this section might take a while to get pictures and explanations done, but I'll start with basic and more common music box disassembly instructions and go from there.
What you'll need:
Safety first! I highly recommend having a padded surface where you can lay your music box down. I use a padded dish mat that is perfect for this, it's wide enough and tall enough that I can comfortably work on it through the entire process, there's enough extra space to put my fragile horse off to the side, and it's got some texture so any dropped parts don't go rolling off under the dishwasher or something. I highly recommend having your phone/camera on hand to take pictures as you disassemble, this makes it a lot easier to reassemble if you get interrupted or especially if you are refinishing the box so it will be a few days before you reassemble. Its also a good idea to have a zip-lock sandwich bag and a sharpie so you don't lose any parts.
As far as tools go, I typically will need a small phillips (plus shape) screwdriver, typically a size 1 works, but something in the electronics size range might be better depending on how stuck your screws are and how much space you have to pry. You may need a deep socket set, often needed to get the "collar" part off if you need to do a box refinish or a full polishing. You might need some needle nose pliers and a small levering tool like a flat head screwdriver to get out staples.
The basic procedure is almost always the same and it starts with removing your fragile figurine from the pole and base. Around 90% of the time, this is done by simply unscrewing the pole and sliding the horse up off it. There are, of course, some special use cases where the procedure is a bit different, this generally includes any figurine with a wood pole, any figurine that has a very thin pole, ornaments, and most figurines that are not the basic animal on pole on a base.
(Click pictures to view full size)
For most other figurines, generally, you can hold the section of pole beneath the figurine in place, then turn the pole above the horse anti-clockwise (to the left) to unscrew it. Be mindful which direction you are turning the pole, if you accidentally tighten (turn clockwise or to the right) the pole too much you can actually break the figurine! It is also a good idea to lay your figurine down on a padded surface when doing this. There is often a threaded rod that goes through the horse that the top and bottom pole sections screw onto, if the top section of pole is tightly screwed on, unscrewing the top section of the pole may actually cause the threaded rod to unscrew from the bottom pole section causing your fragile figurine to unexpectedly come loose.
There will likely be two domed washers above and below your figurine, along with two flat washers, or more likely the crumbled remains of two flat washers as they typically dry out and fall apart over time. Replacing these flat washers has practically become routine maintenance, but unfortunately they are difficult, if not impossible, to find in the right sizes these days. I highly recommend making your own replacement flat washers out of suede. You can learn how here - Replace flat washers
Once your figurine is off the base and set aside somewhere safe, I recommend you start bagging up all the parts so they don't get lost. I usually label a zip-lock with the name of the figurine before I even start disassembling and immediately bag every part that I take off - this cuts down on screws and bits falling off the table and bouncing off into another dimension, never to be seen again. While you probably can find, or make, replacement parts, it can be a real pain sometimes.
With the figurine and washers removed you should be able to also unscrew the threaded center rod from the remaining brass pole section. You could leave the threaded rod screwed in for a lot of maintenance and repair tasks, but if you plan to clean and polish the pole itself, I do recommend taking it out completely - that metal is not designed to get wet and water may leak into the threads and cause it to rust to your brass pole sections (meaning you would not be able to remove your figurine again.)
If you find that the threaded rod /is/ rusted together already, your options are a bit limited. You can try running hot water to try heating up the brass pole and get some movement, but I have only had that work a couple times. If you really must get the pole apart, you can try squirting a tiny bit of WD-40, break release, or rust remover into the threads - just make sure you very tightly tape up ALL the brass, wood, figurine sections, around the area of the rusted threads with something like painters tape. Immediately after getting the chemical down into the threads, remove the tape and wipe everything else down thoroughly with a wet rag - I usually wipe down two or three times. These chemicals will eat straight through any finish, gold/silver plating, paint, etc. and it happens fast.
From here on out disassembly starts to get more specific to the actual style of carousel you are working on. Please click on the image that looks closest to your figurine to jump straight to that section to continue:
(Click pictures to view full size)
Here we have a Ruby from San Francisco Music Box Company's Carousel Jewels collection put out in 1990. This is very a typical music box with a horse that goes up and down, music produced by a winding key on the bottom of the box. This one has an "insert" style pole with a "collar" attached to the box itself. Looking at the underside you will likely find a plastic box inset into the wood.
Next step is to address the bottom of the music box. With "higher end" manufacturers it is typical for the music mechanism to be installed inside a plastic box that has been inset into the wood base itself - this is typically for sound quality purposes.
First we will want to take off the winder key; it should unscrew from a tiny post if you turn it counter-clockwise (to the left.) Next we want to unscrew the tiny phillips screws in the four corners of the plastic box insert which should release the "lid" of the plastic box, which the music box itself is often attached to. You will probably see other screws on the plastic box, (often times a different color or size of screw,) those most likely hold the music mechanism to the lid. I do not typically find a need to remove the music box mechanism from the plastic lid, almost all maintenance can be done while it is still attached, however, if your plastic lid needs to be cleaned, or if you are worried about stickers falling off when you need to oil the music mechanism, you can choose to take it off. Just be aware that the screws holding the box to the lid are often hidden under stickers (another reason I typically do not remove the mechanism.)
Let's address the music box mechanism next. Typically for an up and down movement horse you will have something like this picture. The cross bar with the bottom section of brass pole will probably separate from the music box itself while you are removing the lid section of the plastic box. Do not stress, if you look carefully on the right side of the music mechanism you should see two pegs that the cross bar of the bottom section of pole slides onto.
If you plan to polish your brass pole, then you can sometimes remove it from the plastic cross bar section by simply unscrewing it - do not force it though, if it snaps off there it becomes pretty tricky to fix. I almost never remove the brass pole from the crossbar, I just try not to get too much polish on the plastic section.
Remaining on the box for this style is the brass collar section the pole slides through. If you look on the underside, inside the plastic box, you should see a nut that holds the collar on the box.
You should be able to remove that nut with a deep socket (lefty loosie, righty tighty) to completely remove the collar from the wood box.
Sometimes the remainder of the plastic box will fall out when you remove the washer, but more often than not with this style they glued the plastic box in place so it didn't wobble. You should be able to leave it in the wood box and sand, refinish, or clean the rest of the box without any problems. I would only caution to use extreme care if you intend to use any kind of chemical stripper on the wood prior to staining as the plastic could melt if the stripper got on it.
The last item is the feet. With this kind of rubber feet, you should see a staple inside which you can simply pry out of the wood to remove them for cleaning (which as you can see these particular feet needed very badly.
Generally when you put the feet back on, you can just line up the staples to the holes in the bottom of the box. If they don't seem like they are staying on well, try bending the staple prongs a tiny bit and lightly tap the staple into the wood - set a flat head screwdriver on the staple, then tap the back of the screwdriver to hammer them in. You can also try adding a little drop of B-7000 or crazy glue inside one of the staple holes, just know that you may have difficulty getting that foot off again in the future.
Your disassembly should be complete!
A final note regarding badges or coins that are inset into the box. These, especially with the San Francisco Music Boxes can be extremely difficult to remove. Often times with say Willitts boxes, there is a slight gap around the badge that you can get something flat and solid into to pry up the badge (hopefully without denting the wood when you apply leverage), but SMFB's tolerances do not often give that luxury. If you intend to refinish the box, you can try heating up the glue under the badge with a heat gun (I do not believe a hair dryer would get hot enough and I cannot recommend applying anything like an iron to the badge itself as it might melt or get damaged.)
When I am refinishing a box where I cannot easily get the badge/coin out, I will usually just protect the badge/coin by laying a couple layers of painters tape over the badge, then very carefully slip a number 1 size craft knife, or razor blade, along the outer edge of the coin to cut off the excess tape. With very expensive pieces, I have been known to make a paper template for my tape round because I did not want to put a blade anywhere near the wood itself - I like to use wax paper or parchment paper for making templates because its semi-translucent plus you can usually stick your tape to the other side of the paper, cut out the tape just outside the traced lines, then remove the paper leaving a kind of painters tape sticker that fits the badge perfectly. Sometimes you can kind of tuck in the tape around the badge with a toothpick or (very blunt) butter knife.
(Click pictures to view full size)
On the left is Friendship from Willitt's Legends of the Rose Carousel Romance series, a large stationary horse on a solid brass claw-foot style base. On the right is a smaller version on a solid brass claw-foot style base.
Once your figurine and washers are safely removed, you should be able to unscrew the bottom section of pole from the brass base. Some of the smaller brass base figurines will have a nut on the underside of the base that holds the pole.
Once your figurine and washers are safely removed, you should be able to unscrew the bottom section of pole from the brass base. Some of the smaller brass base figurines will have a nut on the underside of the base that holds the pole.
On the large Willitt's Friendship, the brass sleeve had come loose from the adapter that screws in to the brass base. Note the threaded insert in the pole on the left vs the pole on the right. This is fairly easy to fix, you can just add a couple drops of B-7000 glue to the insert, just try not to get any on your brass - if you do, then rub it off when it dries to the tacky stage (maybe 20 minutes depending on your temperature.)
Pole choas aside, that's it for disassembling this style.
(Click pictures to view full size)
Here is a fantastic Willitts rocker #6422. Between the two wood rocker legs there is a large vertically mounted music box with an extended key. This box not only plays music, but also causes a rocking motion.
Once you've removed the horse and washers, you should be able to unscrew the center rod that went through the horse. You should also be able to unscrew the bottom pole from the brass section of the rocker.
Flipping over the rocker base, you should see four screws in center that hold the music box onto the brass plate connecting the two rocker legs.
Once you get the brass music box housing loose from the rocker legs, you can remove the winder key by turning it anti clockwise.
On the bottom you should find 4 screws around the outside of the brass housing, those are holding the "lid" on.
With the lid off the brass housing you should be able to slide the music box section out and your disassembly will be complete.
It has been a while since I took one of these apart, but I believe the movement arm (attached to the top of the music box in right picture) can also be unscrewed from the music box for cleaning.
That's it for disassembling this style.
One of the more difficult to maintain base styles can be the ones with a round bottom lid over the music box mechanism. Here are a few examples arranged from easiest (left) to the hardest to remove (right). (Click images for full size)
Screw on round bottom
The screw style are pretty self-explanatory. The screws around the outside remove the bottom, the ones in the center hold the music box mechanism to the lid
I'll go over one of the more complicated versions of this screw on round lid style and some common issues that come up. This is Willitt's 1984 #8981. It is a stationary horse on a wood base and has an on/off knob for the music box.
Once your figurine is removed and set safely aside, we can get this disassembled.
Right off the bat you can see we are not going to be able to just undo a few screws and take the lid off here. We will first have to remove those rubber feet. This style feet are almost always held in with a staple straight into the wood box. It is quite hard to get a prying device (like a flat head screwdriver) down into the recess where the staple heads are without ruining the foot - typically the foot will distort into an oval, but with older, dried out, rubber feet in poor condition, it can rip down the side and become useless!
I find the safest way to get these stapled rubber feet off (and especially if you can see evidence of them being glued on as in this case,) is to get a flat prying device underneath the foot right up against the wood base (careful not to gouge the wood.) Then gently rock and pry the foot back and forth from one side to the other until you can get something fully behind the foot and gently pull it off. If you have a plastic lid like this, I recommend trying to keep all of your pressure on the prying device on that as the wood will often dent (You may even notice the evidence of someone having dented this one taking off the feet before. This is quite common with what I call "resellers" - they quite often put porcelain figurines on different boxes with a working music mechanism, or they'll pull it apart to put in a different figurines working music box in order to get a higher price by saying "it still works.")
A somewhat common problem with previously repaired feet, or feet which have been glued on, is that one side of the staple will be really stuck in the wood. The best way to get this out is to grab the stuck staple leg with a needle nose pliers and pull it straight out. Unfortunately, the staples used are very soft, so it can get deformed very easily as it did here.
The deformity can be pretty easily reshaped by roughly centering the wire over the end of your pliers on the wire and bending the legs down. You just need to get the width of the staple right so it goes back through the existing holes through the foot - I find it helps to stick the end of each staple leg into the "bottom" side of the rubber foot (the side that was flush against the wood) to get the correct width.
As a note, I have had the metal of the staple break before, I was able to replace it with a staple from the hardware store. The modern staples are usually a silver color and typically go into staple guns. They are measured in gauge and length. The first time it had happened, I went down to the local (small box) hardware store with the foot & broken staple and they found a box of what I needed to replace it. Unfortunately, I do not recall what size or gauge they were, I had put all the staples into a zip-lock baggie because I didn't like the original packaging for some reason I cannot recall.
I will also note that this tool on the right is an electric drill to socket adapter and its an almost perfect tool to reinstall these stapled feet. I find the smaller drill side is perfect to fit inside the rubber foot, and the larger socket end is a big enough target to easily hit with a hammer, and there is just enough play on the drill end to focus your hammering to one or the other staple leg. I find it easiest to push the staple completely through the rubber foot, align the legs with the holes in the wood, then lightly tap in a little bit of one staple leg, then move to the other staple leg so they go in pretty even. Just go slow - if you try to rush it, or hammer with too much force, the staple legs will just bend over and you'll likely have to start over, if not replace the staple. If you have a helper, it is useful to hold each staple leg with the needle nose pliers for as long as you can while you hammer them in.
With the feet removed, you can take off the key winder by turning it counter-clockwise (basically its the opposite direction from winding the music box) and set that aside. Now we can undo the screws around the outside of the round lid and pop the lid out.
As you can see this music box mechanism is contained inside a plastic box (they started doing this to make the music louder as I understand it.) Unfortunately for us these plastic boxes can be a bit tough to crack into and they are prone to breaking.
If you look at the bottom of the round lid, you can see there are two slots, those are the little "clip" things that hold the box together. I usually start by squeezing the plastic box part at each of the slot sides to see which way the clips hook on. Then you can get a flat prying implement into that gap to un-clip the box section from the round lid section and access the music box mechanism. Its hard to explain so I made a quick video, its a bit shaky as I was trying to hold the phone and working one handed.
Patience is a virtue on getting the plastic box open, as mentioned earlier they will break easily, and especially if they were previously broken and glued back in - as was the case with this one. Unfortunately, once it breaks there is really no easy fix. You will probably have to glue it to the lid in order to get the cover to stay in place once it is installed back into the wood box. When this happens, I usually just put a small dot of B-7000 glue on the opposite corners of the box. This is typically enough to hold the cover in place, but not so much that it is impossible to remove without breaking it again.
Before we remove the music box mechanism from the round lid, you may want to note the location and functionality of the on/off knob. There are different "styles" of on/off mechanisms you might encounter, but every one I have seen involves physically stopping the fly wheel on the music box mechanism from spinning. In this case, the knob just turns an L shaped rod - In the off position the rod interrupts the fly wheel.
In the on position, the rod rotates "down" so it is pointing to the spring casing of the music box mechanism. As a note, this style of on/off knob usually does not come out of the plastic lid, they were bent into the L shape after being inserted through the lid. You can still clean it with brass polish as it won't hurt the plastic at all - just have to be careful about getting water on any stickers on the round lid.
The final disassembly of this style of round bottom music box is to remove the bottom pole of the stationary figurine. Looking inside the bottom cavity of the wood base you should see a nut. You can remove that with a deep socket, then you should be able to slip the bottom pole section out.
It semi-regularly happens that someone will glue the pole in place and you will not be able to get it out. This often happens if the pole gets jammed or forced to the side, it kind of wallows out the hole through the box and the pole/figurine will wobble back and forth. The most common repair a lot of people do is to just dump glue into the hole. There isn't much you can quickly do in this kind of situation except to work around it - I suggest to polish the pole first, then rinse the wood and towel dry it thoroughly with the pole. Then you can get off any incidental brass polish wax when you wash the wood. (If you want to actually fix the wallowed out hole problem; you can dig out whatever glue repair was made, rebuild the hole section using plastic wood, then sand and stain the wood box.)
Stapled round bottom
The staple on style are pretty fairly easy. There are usually just 3 or 4 staples around the outside remove the bottom, and the screws in the center hold the music box mechanism to the lid
Here we have a Prettique from the Marti Gras Collection named Endymion. It is a stationary figurine.
Once your figurine is removed and set safely aside, try unscrewing the bottom pole section from the wood base by turning it counter clock-wise. If you can get the bottom section of pole off it makes getting out the staples holding the lid round much easier.
A small flat head screwdriver is the perfect tool for this. There are only a couple "dangers" with this style. The first is gouging the wood lid (note staple on bottom left) trying to get under the staple as they are sometimes sunk into the wood. Sometimes I use a sturdy screw or nail to try to lift the staple enough to get your prying device under it. A lot of times I just gouge the wood a little.
The only cautions I would give is that these types of lids are very thin so you don't want to apply too much pressure and break it. Secondly, try not to bend the staples too much, these are typically fairly strong staples, but its a lot easier to reinstall them if you don't bend them all crazy. They should pull straight out and be perfectly reusable.
Once you have the staples out of the round lid it should fall out of the wood box and you'll have access to the music box inside. The screws on the lid hold the music box mechanism onto the lid and the winding key can be removed by turning it counter-clockwise.
Look inside the wood box inset picture and note that silver pinwheel looking thing. That is a threaded lock nut kind of thing which the bottom section of pole screws into. If you can imagine in 3D, that used to be a full circle, the kind of "plus" shape is created by folding sections of the metal into little barbs, which they then hammer into the wood of the base. I do not recommend trying to removing that as it often has glue helping keep it in place. If you mess that kind of area up it can be tricky to get it back in so the figurine sits right.
If it's already messed up (figurine wobbles on the pole, etc.) you can sometimes glue that pinwheel nut thing in place and stabilize the figurine. If that doesn't work then you can "rebuild" the area with plastic wood, just make sure you put the lock nut in place before the plastic wood dries. You might have to put a bit of glue onto the nut to get it to stick to the plastic wood as it doesn't really have the same... idk "friction" or maybe "density" as real wood does. When I did this repair process, I left the plastic wood to dry with the nut pressed into it, in the morning the nut just fell right out of the dried plastic wood so I had to glue the nut into the repair.