To answer Mr. Atcheson's question about how to get blotting paper for
gaskets; the secret is to ask for 'replacement sheets for desk sets'.
The clerks in modern chain office supply stores don't know what you
mean by blotting paper.  I get mine at an old-fashioned office supply
store downtown (Weldin's; 413 Wood St, Pittsburgh PA 15222), where the
shop assistants actually remember, and still sell, steel pens like I
used in school centuries ago.  Maybe there is still such a place in
your city.

Blotting paper gaskets were comparatively rarely used in players, being
somewhat porous, but are used all over the place in pipe organs, .

TECH TIP: For difficult sealing applications, such as the gaskets
between the ends of the 3 decks in an Ampico or Aeolian action, or
where the bellows board attaches to the bottom of the windchest of a
reed organ, try this: Break up a beeswax toilet bowl ring in a coffee
can; set the can in a pan of boiling water and melt the wax.  Cut and
punch the required gasket from blotting paper and saturate it with the
melted wax; just dip it in the can.  Put the gasket on one of the faces
where it goes, it will stick in place by itself.

This works wherever a gasketed joint is subject to stress or vibration,
such as where a flanged elbow is screwed to a chest, or where future
access to tighten the screws will be difficult.  It is perfectly
air-tight, and remains so since the wax sticks firmly to both faces,
allowing the joint to flex without opening up.

For the purists like me who insist that the techniques they use have
passed the test of time, this method was used for difficult gasketing
applications on my Aeolian organ, built in 1906.  The wax was still
soft and sticky, and had not migrated away from the joints, in 1983.

Richard Vance