I've read somewhere that some player tinkers were so pressed to
find pneumatic cloth that they were wondering about the viability of
raincoat material or old oilcloth table coverings.  Well, I've got
a new source to fantasize about.  I ordered a shop apron through eBay
for about eleven dollars and it just came in.

The cloth has the appearance, weight, and feel of the real thing and
even smells like it.  It is a charcoal colored gray rubber over a thin
white cloth of some kind.  It's close enough to tempt some of us to
run a test on it.

Evidently Eisco Labs has just ceased selling these lab aprons in favor
of a clear plastic see-through variety and they have dumped a factory
load on the market.  They are all over eBay and the Internet at various
cheap prices.

I wouldn't, at this point, recover an entire set of pneumatics with
this stuff.  I did see two pinholes at folds.  But it might provide
an emergency matching patch on a tracker bellows.

Tim Gautreaux