Hi all,  In yesterdays MMDigest Joel Gauthier asked if it's absolutely
necessary to replace the cloth on a wind motor's slide valves.  As
Robbie stated, it would probably be enough to just seal it.

But I find it looks better when replaced, certainly when the motor
cloth is a different color.  (Mine has beige cloth now, where green
was original.)  It takes only about 5% of the time of recovering the
bellows to recover the slide valves.  Just rip off the old cloth and
sand the slides a little.

I cut my cloth into several just-too-big pieces and lay them on a
perfectly flat surface.  Then I applied glue to the slide valves and
pressed then on the cloth.  After the glue sets, I just cut of the
edges and have perfectly neat recovered slide valves.

Back to the question if it is really necessary to do so, I notice
a very, very small increase of power in my wind motor.  The old slide
valves were not leaking very much, and probably would last for a long
time.  But then again, the little extra work took me about 10 minutes,
being well worth it.

Regards from the Netherlands, where we seem to have gone from autumn
to spring and skipped winter!

Niels Berkers