Roger Kling asks about repair of the flap valves on a early Ampico A
rotary pump.  I presume this is the typical four-bellows pump.

I have reconditioned a pump from a Simplex (?) system.  This pump used
leather flap valves and these were turned up across the width of the
leather and did not seal correctly.  To repair these flap valves I used
a sheet of aluminium cut to the required width.  I used several tricks:

1. The aluminium material was that material used in offset lithography
printing/duplicating applications.  The material is thin (maybe about
0.4 mm thickness).

2. To cut the material to width, I used a fine scribe and then parted
the strip by bending along the scribe line.

3. The strip was then coated with blotting paper I bought at a
stationery shop.  I used contact adhesive, applied thinly and smoothly,
and pressed the two parts together under pressure using two sheets of
glass.

4. To attach the completed strip to the boards, I used the existing
wooden blocks fitted to the original leather strap.

The danger of using thin material is the tendency to distort from a
perfectly flat sheet.  The printing sheets are _very_ flat; cutting
with scissors or knives will destroy the flatness.

Paul Rumpf
Melbourne