Junk-Bin Perforator
By Bob and Sonja Lemon
Hi Larry, We don't have the Leabarjan, but we do have the next best thing!
Several years ago we received a call inquiring if we were interested in buying a Ludwig Recordo player grand piano. We couldn't resist looking. We have never seen a grand piano so well worn as this one. The owner, at this time quite elderly, *loved* music. He wrote it and he played it. The ivories on the piano were completely worn through, and then some.
We did not buy the piano, but asked if anything else was available for sale. The lady showed us some piano rolls including a box marked Leabarjan Demonstrator Roll. We also found 2 hand cut rolls: Laughing Water and American Patrol. The Laughing Water roll had Recordo expression holes. Now we were excited! Did she know if there was a perforator? She wasn't sure, but she had some junk in the back we could look at. Well, no, we didn't find a Leabarjan, but we did find a hand made perforator.
This thing was made from junk! The man salvaged anything and everything that was thrown away in his neighborhood and turned it into something useful! The case was an old wooden file box, the ends of the box were metal with gears and clutches that operated the take-up spool and blank roll. There was a hand made paper punch that completely spanned the roll and was mounted on what appeared to be an old typewriter carriage and driven with a pinion gear acting on a rack gear. The pinion was driven by a shaft extending out the right front with an outdoor faucet handle mounted on it.
Mounted on top of the punch head was a pointer that ran across the holes in a tracker bar which was mounted overhead. Stamped on adhesive tape on the front of the tracker bar were note names. On the back of the tracker bar was the note scale laid out to match the holes in the tracker bar. There also appeared to be parts from old coffee pots and wheels from model trains. Mounted on the left side was a finger-operated clip that grabbed the paper along a time scale (1/16 note, 1/8 note, etc.). The time scale clip could be moved as the roll advanced. This was a very ingenious device and it cut a beautiful roll.
The sad part of this story. The man was a composer and had a stack of music that was at least a foot high. His niece, who was the administrator, would not allow us to look at the music and said that since he had signed all of them, she was going to destroy it. She would not allow anything with his name or signature to be saved. Such a loss! A life time of loving music and all was destroyed.
Just a little local history.
Bob and Sonja Lemon
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(Message sent Wed 26 Feb 1997, 07:16:30 GMT, from time zone GMT-0800.) |
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