Recently it became necessary to revisit a restoration on my Fischer
Ampico B that I had done 40 years ago. At that time all valves were
supplied with new leather pouches and treated with the naphta thinned
rubber cement.

After 40 years I needed to reseal them and did some tests with several
alternative media. Hydrophane became my sealant of choice for its
excellent sealing property with almost no effect on the flexibility
of the pouch, plus it's "leather conservation" character.

However, after reading some comments on Hydrophane on the forum
regarding the "creeping" that this substance does -- and the suggested
negative effect that this might have when re-gluing new pouches on
the wood that had been covered with some lightly saturated Hydrophane
-- I undertook some testing.

I did several tests; re-gluing pouch leather on wood that had been
lightly treated with Hydrophane showed no ill effect whatsoever. In
the case of a re-seal, there would obviously be some barrier of the
glue saturated leather layer that would minimize seep through. No ill
effects there whatsoever. Pouch leather that had been treated before
and then glued down also gave a solid bond.

So it seems to me that there is no reason to worry about unwanted
"after effects" of Hydrophane that creeps a bit further than the
initial intended outline.

Robert J. Buskop
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
foxhole@telfort.nl.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]

[ MMDigest articles about Hydrophane are indexed at
[ https://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/H/hydrophane.html 
[ -- Robbie