My Dad is considering working on the old player during the cold winter
months.  Years ago I recovered the pneumatic stack, and bellows and most
everything else.  Last summer we checked the bellows after closing off
all the out going tubes and hoses, and found it to hold vaccuum for over
ten seconds.  I considered that to be ok.  We deduced that the stack has
lots of little tiny leaks.  We took apart a few valve blocks by removing
the metal seat on top and found nothing major going on.  No cracks in the
bakelite disc, no dusty powdery deterioration of the leather when roughed
up on the edges, and in general everything looked fairly good for it's
age.  So next we took one that had minor leaking.  This was found by
putting the valve block up to our mouths.  I know this isn't very
sanitary, but we hot on a trail.  We roughed up the leather on the little
metal disk and reassembled the valve.  This got rid of the minor
leaking.  After doing this to a few more we decided that this was a good
course of action to take to make the player pump easier.  Has anyone else
tried this, and should we do this to all of the valves regardless of the
leakage?  Is this a short term fix?

I know, I know, we should really swap out all the leathers while we're in
there.  Any suggestions?

By the way, I made a small jig for testing these valves so that he
doesn't have to put his mouth on that dirty old thing.  He can now
perform the same task by putting a removable and cleanable piece of
tubing in his mouth instead.

I might add, the piano and the Dad are in Wisconsin and as you can see
from the sig line, I'm in........

--- Larry Fisher RPT, Portland Metro's Authority on PianoDisc Systems
        For more information call (360) 256-2999 in Vancouver, Wa.
                      or email larryf@pacifier.com