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Repair the Music Roll Using Its Own Paper
By Adam G. Ramet

If you need to repair a roll with green paper (or indeed any other
shade of paper) you might like to consider the following.  At the end
of the roll, beyond the final playing notes and rewind hole, is often
quite a bit of blank paper.  On some rolls there is only a few inches
but others might have as much as three or four feet of blank paper
where the perforators were left running before the paper was trimmed
off.  This paper is the same batch and age as the rest of the roll
you are fixing.

If you wind the complete roll off the spool and slice off, say, six
inches or more of paper from this end portion closest to the spool, and
then re-glue the paper back to spool, you now have an exact match for
repair -- the same thickness, color and age and no-one would ever know
any different.  Don't take off more than is absolutely necessary as the
blank paper at the end prevents impressions being made in the roll from
spool nails etc.

I have an old junk Duo-Art roll which I think mouse had once nibbled
or something.  There was a chewed out section which meant there was a
ragged hole an inch across.  The hole repeated every few inches as the
mouse has chewed into the roll and the hole decreased in size until
after about three feet of music it had vanished.  I used paper from the
end of the roll to patch it perfectly.

To do repairs of this sort use a very sharp craft knife.  Cut a similar
size patching piece from your end-of-roll section and lay it over the
hole to be patched.  Slice out a square or rectangle through the patch
and the damaged roll beneath making sure the two are firmly held down.

Angle the blade slightly outwards so that the edge of the paper cuts
are angled.  This means that at the top of the sheet the hole will be
slightly larger than the bottom.  Your cut out piece will be likewise
and this will ensure a good fit.  Remove the damaged section you have
just cut out and fit the repair square you have just cut.  Apply
Filmoplast P mending tape or whatever you're using and that's the
job done.

Do not throw away the spare paper left over.  You may have several
strips of this old paper after doing several rolls.  You should keep
them flat in a file and pencil what they were from (i.e. Duo-Art,
Green Welte, blue Artona, etc.) and they just may come in useful one
day.  However, don't go through your rolls slicing out spare paper
unnecessarily; it's only a very last resort.  The paper is better
left on the roll, tightly rolled at the centre of the roll away from
exposure to the atmosphere.  Left undisturbed there it will age evenly
with the rest of the roll.

Adam Ramet


(Message sent Fri 22 Mar 2002, 10:17:02 GMT, from time zone GMT.)

Key Words in Subject:  Its, Music, Own, Paper, Repair, Roll, Using

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