In MMD 970919 Dave Ingalls asked about organette bleed sizes:

> I am restoring a Mandolina paper roll organ that has had the bleeds on
> the valves altered making some of the notes unresponsive.  I would like
> to know the correct bleed diameter used for the valves in a Mandolina
> or Celestina organette.

I have a Celestina in progress at the moment.  The original bleed
holes are .055" diameter, as near as I can measure.  I have made a fair
imitation by punching circles out of business card material and drilling
a stack of them all at once with a 1.4 mm drill.  If anyone has "real"
ones I too would like to hear about it.

On the subject of organettes: a month or two back I enquired here about
suitable material to re-cover the Celestina pallet pneumatics.  These are
small pressure pneumatics are about 3.5" long, 1/2" wide at the hinge
end, tapering to 1/4" at the other, with a span of about 1/2".

I got one reply suggesting zephyr skin.  This started a long discussion
on what was wrong with zephyr skin in general, and one source of zephyr
skin in particular, but I never did get any other suggestions on what
to use instead.

I have covered samples with regular pouch leather (.012"), pouch leather
and kangaroo skin split to .008-.010", and even zephyr skin (.002").  The
thicker materials need a thicker hinge (i.e., a greater gap between the
boards) to reduce the stiffness, but otherwise all seem satisfactory.

I would still appreciate any other suggestions from organ folk before
I go ahead and cover a whole new set of them.

John Wolff
Melbourne, Australia.