Tip of the day: The past four nickelodeons I rebuilt were all Cremonas.
If the valves are good leave them alone (quote from Dave Ramey).

I made a jig to rebuild them that is really simple.  I had to build a
stack from scratch so I made a lot of templates to build it and then gave
the templates to another rebuilder in California.  My jig was a little
piece turned on the lathe with a center hole the size of the valve wire.
This jig just fits inside the valve well so that you can center the
valve stem on the pouch.

I replaced all the pouch leather and glued a small fibre disc to the
center of the pouch.  With this jig I then marked the center of the
pouch.  I then drilled a smaller-than-valve-stem hole in the center of
each pouch for the valve stem to screw into.   I used numeric drill bits
to do this.

The valve faces need to have enough play in them to seat properly.
I made little leather washers out of pouch leather to seal the valves
around the stems.  Try to do everything just like Cremona did it.
This is not the time to improve.

Don Teach¶
dat-smc@juno.com