Hi All,  I remember reading an old MMD posting by Rick Cooley that he
bought a model XW Orchestrelle that was playing when he received it,
but he noticed the pouches were dry so he painted them with neat's-foot
oil.  Can you guess the result?  If you want an amusing story about
what not to do, read the following link:

  http://www.mmdigest.com/archives/Digests/199907/1999.07.24.03.html 

Lesson to be learned: set valves after they are relaxed.  The XW
pouches probably contracted after the treatment, causing the valves
to be open, and destroying the performance of a fine instrument.
(That was ten years ago, I'm hoping that it's been fixed since then.)

Another lesson: don't try to treat old leather.  If it's working
you can leave it until it's time to restore the instrument properly.
Treating the old leather in this case caused disaster.

I want to add, I think Rick Cooley acted quite responsibly when he
tried to treat the leather, and I probably would have done the same
thing myself in the same situation, but we can all learn from the
outcome here.

One of these days I'm going to build myself a bubble jar to see how
leaky the pouches really are.  I have always read about the need to
seal them, but to be perfectly honest, I've never experimented with
a system to see how good/bad they really are and I'm curious about
that.  I guess one could seal off the input to the bleeds on the
Duo-Art and let the piano play; if it doesn't return, then the pouches
are perfect.  If it has good repetition, they are leaky.  :-)

Eli Shahar