Hello MMD.  Thank you to Tom Hutchinson for his kind words about
my roll repair table (MMD 05/09/11).  Since I wrote about it I have
constructed another one with the same dimensions but with a 65-note
roll chuck that I was lucky enough to find in the junk heap of a local
piano store.  I can swap the secondary table (for upside-down work)
between the 65-note table and the 88-note table.

This unit has been invaluable during the last 16 months, during which
I have renovated my entire collection of 65-note rolls, all 1250 of them.
Some of these have had monstered snakebites -- not surprisingly since
they are so close to the edges -- and it has been very useful to be
able to flip back and forth between top and bottom to tease out the
folded up paper.  Sometimes it's a bit like reassembling squashed
blowflies, but more rewarding.  Fortunately, in most cases, all the
original paper is still there, even the bridges between the snakebites.

Tom's idea of replacing the left-hand roll flange with a spare drive
flange, in order to get at the under side of a roll, is a good one, and
should work for most QRS and other American rolls.  However it won't
work for Aeolian rolls with a left-hand flange that is adjustable only
within certain limits.

That's to say, it won't work unless you can pull out the pin that
slides back and forth in the oval eyelet that is let into the cardboard
roll core.  For earlier rolls with two eyelets on opposite sides of the
core it's not so difficult; one can simply punch out the pin.  For the
later rolls with only one eyelet one needs needle-nosed pliers with
enough grip to pull the pin out without creating havoc -- not so easy.

This assumes that you can get at the eyelets; sometimes the end of the
paper is glued to the core too close to them.  Persons of strong
personality and little patience will rip the end of the roll off the
core.  Those of a more sensitive nature, who cannot bear to inflict
pain on a roll, will steam the paper off the core with a wet rag and
an iron.  This takes a lot of patience; the application of some alcohol
-- to the paper, not the person -- between soaking sometimes helps.

John Phillips in Hobart, Tasmania

 [ See the photos at http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/jphillips1.html 
 [ -- Robbie