Hi,  To add to Bruce Clark's cloth woes, (MMD 990121) I noticed the
snare drum reiterating beater on my recently built orchestrion was not
performing very well, on closer inspection I found a 1/4" rip,  a 1/16"
hole and many pinholes in the cloth.

I know the reiterating beater gets a hard time, and the orchestrion has
had a lot of plays in the last 6 months, but all the other cloth does
not show any signs of wear at all.  (And so it shouldn't !)

Oh, one other significant fact: the reiterating beater in question
was the only beater I bought -- from the PPCo.   The others I all made
myself and used normal pneumatic cloth with hide glue. (Cloth from Rick
Alabaster - plug plug!!).

The beater from the PPCo appeared to have synthetic type cloth (very
shiny material back) with a clear gooey type glue.  I assume this is
PVC-E glue but, as I have had no other experience with synthetic
coverings, I may be mistaken.

I scraped the wood clean from this glue before recovering with trusty
hide glue and Rick's cloth.  We'll have to see how that lasts now --
that will be the real test.

Peter Coggins
(Blue Mtns, Australia)