It may be that Seth Brown's problem in getting clean punching from
his Leabarjan perforator isn't because the punch pins are not sharp.
I recall a trip years ago to visit the late Eddie Freyer, who was
a master perforator of rolls.  Eddie explained that over long use
the holes in the die plate which the punch pins punched into would
enlarge slightly through wear.  That small degree of wear was enough
to cause ragged punching.

I believe Eddie was running an Acme perforator, which got a lot of
use.  Whether a small hand-operated Leabarjan would see enough use to
cause enlarged die holes is a question.  But Eddie's solution was to
make a small, hardened-steel, donut-shaped punch with an inside
diameter just slightly larger than a die hole.  He would then use
a mallet on the punch, after carefully centering the punch right over
the die hole, to swage the die metal just enough to close the diameter
of the hole.  Eddie didn't say, but I imagine he might then have had
to use a reamer of the correct size to bring the diameter of the die
hole back to standard.

A person who has had a lot of present-day experience with Leabarjan
perforators is L. Douglas Henderson, who produces Artcraft Music Rolls
up in Wiscasset, Maine.  Write to <artcraft@wiscasset.net.geentroep>
[delete ".geentroep"].

Matthew Caulfield
Irondequoit, New York