•If arch or tube punches are of soft enough metal, they can be sharpened with a file. If they are harder a whetstone or grinder is necessary. I use a die grinder and magnifying safety glasses. This is easier, for a few punches, than setting up a grinding fixture. Make sure to grind only the beveled ...

•To answer Mr. Goodman's inquiry about sharpening punches; I have been using this method, however crude it seems, for years with reasonable success. The first essential step is to insure that the new edge will be perfectly 'flat' or square with the axis of the punch. Hold the punch at right angles t...

•John Phillips' recent posting about punch sizes should open up an interesting discussion. In an email exchange a little while ago John brought up his findings to me, so I got out the original roll in question and measured the single punch dimensions. It was clear that the original punch was not rou...

•In Digest 980709 Matthew Caulfield wrote: > You may end up cutting the words into the belt as a stencil, > just as they [QRS] do. That would involve getting an alphabet of > steel punches made. Exactly! But where? Do they even exist? I have spent the past four days searching the web for "punches", ...

•As Andy LaTorre mentioned, unmodified steel punches are going to simply cut out a triangle for the A or a circle for the O and so on, unless they are modified by filing out bridges across areas that, if left unbridged, would let part of the stencil paper drop out. Even then, would the punches be sh...

•In October 1998 I mentioned that I had a punch machine that punched roll music for Raffin style 20 and 31 note organs directly from MIDI files, and that I intended to publish a booklet with details and a copy of the software, etc., sometime in the future. The project seems to have taken off vertica...

•Hi everyone, I just bought a wonderful device in Amsterdam, and was hoping that someone could tell me what it is. It's brand new, but since it was the last one that the shop had (the "floor model"), I took it without any kind of box, booklet, or identifying marks. I have suspicions that it is manuf...

•Mando Jost wrote: > The paper strips are about 3 inches wide by 18 inches long, and in > order to make the holes in the strips you have to punch the little > black dots out yourself (with a sturdy, included hole-puncher). > A hand-crank mechanism rolls the strips through the box and over > the comb...

•Hello All -- Manda Clair Jost's fun posting got us to wanting a "Pling- Plong!" I also want to give some as gifts; where do I, a non-European citizen (I live in a third-world country: California) get a couple of these gizmos to punch and play on? I have also been looking for the "Mr. Christmas" Chi...

•Having lurked around MMD in silence for a couple of years (and learned a lot), I can't resist raising a small voice on the subject of the Sankyo 20-note player punch-a-tune. I believe this device made its first appearance in America twenty or thirty years ago, when a battery-powered version was mar...

•Hi; If she still has them, you can get one of these little mechanisms from our good friend Nancy Fratti. I think I paid about $50 for it at the last meeting. It is now situated in a very nice miniature barrel organ replica that I made for my wife as a Christmas present. Sounds very good as well. I ...

•The Steinbach 20-tune paper strip music box I have is powered by an electric motor. So it is not a "manivelle", contrary to Robbie's subject heading on my last posting. Kazuo Murakami's posting in the 990818 MMD makes it clear that my Sankyo movement is the "Rhythmica Ace", so Steinbach was using t...

•Music-Roll Punching From Midi Files The British Organ Grinders' Association (yes, BOGA!) held their annual meeting at the Amberley Museum, Sussex, on 16th October. It was well attended and a lot of fun. I took along the MIDster punch machine which I had set up to demonstrate punching Raffin-style 2...

•Dear friends, A machine much like Tim is looking for is in use by Mr. Pierre Charial, a professional music marker in Paris, France. I had the opportunity to see it in service. It consists of a normal single punch-and-die machine that slides over the organ book and stops at exactly the places where ...

•Dear Hans, I read your posting on MMD 23.12.99 with interest. I designed and built a system for punching organ roll music from MIDI files. I have been selling this design as a booklet with plans and software for =L=35 UK or $63 USA, and there has been a great deal of interest over the past year, wo...

•Tom Lear reports investigating a simple paper punch for home use in making single copies of music rolls, and coming up with the Leabarjan frame punch as a possibility or Robert Streicher's (the Pond Eddy, N.Y., machinist; phone 570-559-7403) hole punch. Douglas Henderson is the Leabarjan expert her...

•I read with interest the article about a hand punch tool for music rolls. I think I have one that I bought at an estate sale. It looks like a chrome whales mouth. It has Codman stamped on it, plus etched by hand is Von Petz clamp 76-144 , then O.R. A.A.V.H.A. 10/26/72. It also has what appears to b...

•Several list members have asked to hear how our Smith organs sound, and we have now put RealAudio files, arrangements courtesy of Melvyn Wright, up at our site, http://www.floraco.com/organs. You'll need the RealAudio player to hear them, which is free and available from a link on our download page...

•Hello fellow MMD subscribers. This is my first posting after many months of lurking in the MMD Archives section. I have found the Archives to be a tremendous resource. I have been interested in mechanical instruments ever since my parents took me to "Al Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern" in Chicago Heig...

•In the MMD Archives I found some discussion about the ability to convert the MIDI velocities to expression notation for piano rolls. I did not follow all discussions afterwards so I am not sure that I still can contribute something usable this moment. But you never know.... A few months ago I intro...