I read with interest Joyce Brite's comments about words on rolls, and
agree with her.  Not long ago, I purchased some rolls from Eric Bernhardt
of "Upright and Grand" Music Rolls.  I was pleased to see that he had
applied the words to the roll.  The new rolls and copies are produced on
dry waxed paper.  This paper seems to take ink rather well, or at least
in my attempts at marking the "Tempo" with a stamp.

Now I may seem weird and a bit unconventional, but I was fooling around
with the idea that an ink-jet printer could be modified to put words on
piano rolls.  In fact, I tried it, and the only problems that occurred
were that the spacing on the printer was set for a standard piece of
paper, and it balked at stuffing the tab of a roll in it.  Using Page
Maker I was able to gather a stencil font, and space each word exactly
where I wanted it.  It worked nicely, but agreeably there can be problems
with the absorption of ink according to how much wax is in the paper.

I am sure that someone out there would be able to figure out a way to
do it.  It certainly would be far less work than cutting out stencils
and placing them on a long belt.  Once the words were placed properly,
they could be stored on a disk and used over and over.

Bruce Clark