Regarding Spencer Chase's post [181103 MMDigest]:  Whilst it sounds
easy to come up with an improved modern cloth, all this has been tried
before and it failed dismally in that the modern stuff disintegrated
in a fraction of time.

The late Durrell Armstrong from Player Piano Co. came out with "Bilon".
It was excellent but then it ended up his biggest disaster some years
later.  So the problem is that we cannot reliably time test any
materials until it is too late.

Mind you, I personally had to re-repair pianos where the rubber cloth
from Hale had failed during my 3-year warranty period.  It was nearly
the ruin of me.

There is no simple answer but I think nitrile rubber is worth a shot.
[Also known as NBR, Buna-N, and acrylonitrile butadiene rubber.]

The original stuff must have had something else (secret) in it to make
it last so long.  The same goes for the original gray rubber tubing.

Bernt Damm
Sydney