Brett Mohr asked about removing pneumatic cloth from Simplex
pneumatics:  Getting off the hide glue isn't actually necessary, Brett.
New hide glue will go right over the old stuff just fine, and you will
find should make an ever better bond because it was top quality stuff
and has penetrated the wood, sizing it well. Leave it on. That's not to
say, "leave on some of the old cloth along with it." You will have a
hard time getting the halves apart then.

   I will say however that you picked a real "doozy" for your first
player job.  Talk about "where angels fear to tread," you're driving a
sports car. There are a number of details about doing a Simplex valve
pneumatic that may not be immediately obvious to you. I strongly
suggest building a test stand to check each one, having a matching
gasket and vac supply set to a low pressure, like 5- 6" of H2O. Do one
completely, first. Get it operating at a very low intensity. It should
work real snappy, although weak at 5". You'll provide a bleed in your
tester for each pneumatic. Just copy the stack board and fix it to
clamp vertically to your bench.

   Getting the halves apart is not very simple, in most cases. But if
you have a really great freezer, one that gets down to sub-zero
temperatures, or can get some dry ice in a large cooler, try this:
After you have popped out the valve poppets and taken off the outside
valve seats, put them three at a time into a microwave and get them
really hot, so that the old glue will totally dry to powder. Then put
them in a freezer for several days. When you take them out, get a very
large screwdriver that just fits the supply hole. Insert and give it a
twist while they are still very very cold (use gloves). It should break
open.

   By the way, you can also try the microwave trick, and then break
them open while still hot. They will sometimes work that way fairly
well. Expect some splitting. I wouldn't try soaking them. There are two
wooden dowels that would expand and bust the back end of the top half.
When that happens, you can't screw them down any longer. You could
predrill each dowel with a small 1/16" bit, but there are 176 of them,
making for a very unrewarding afternoon. As far as warpage is
concerned, the only maple I've found that doesn't warp when it gets wet
is quartersawn. So to the degree that the grain isn't parallel to the
part is the degree that it will warp a little. You can do without that
problem.

Craig.