Andy Taylor has written about designing a word roll stenciling device.
I have a stencil cutting machine at work. It, however, cuts 1/2 inch
letters. It can cut any width stencil but only six lines deep.

I thought that I would pass along the information that I have on the
company where I buy supplies for the machine.

  F. J. Smith Company
  6815 E. Washington Boulevard
  Commerce, California 90040
  Tel. (213) 728-0227
  Fax (213) 728-2443
  (Area Code 213 will become 323 as of 1/1/99)

They have a catalog of stencil equipment and supplies. I don't find
exactly what Andy needs but they may handle it or be able to direct
him to a source.

Our machine is made by the Marsh Company. That may be a firm to look
up as a source also. They make a machine that cuts 1/4 inch letters.
It appears that the letters on word rolls are 3/16 inch.

They carry Marsh Continu-Form Stencils which are continuous pin-feed
computer printer stencils that might be modified to work.

Andy, do you have a copies of the video of the Sunday Morning show tour
of QRS, the video tour of QRS roll manufacturing, and the video tour
of Play-Rite? If not I can get you a copy of them. They show some scenes
of word rolls being stenciled. If I recall correctly at QRS they have a
hand held stencil cutter something like a Dymo Labelmaker.

Hope this may be of some help.

Jack M. Conway, Los Angeles, California, USA

 [ John Malone used a stencil machine housed in a floor cabinet,
 [ maybe the size of a 30-gallon drum.  He had rigged a music roll
 [ drive to move the master piano roll along with the freshly-cut
 [ stencil, and the operator (a skilled typist) just typed the
 [ words as the hand-marked master roll traveled past a pointer.
 [ The synchronization was excellent.
 [
 [ But the real fun was watching the stencil belt in use: after
 [ aligning the start marks of the stencil with the first note of
 [ the music roll, "Whoosh!"  In less than one second the production
 [ roll had lyrics on it from start to end, and was flying in the
 [ air into a catch basket!  -- Robbie