Removing old gaskets must be done with care; this principle is often
overlooked during the preliminary 'dirty work' of getting the instru-
ment ready for rebuild.  The original mating surfaces were milled or
planed very flat and square during manufacture.  Any sanding, scraping
or gouging of these surfaces will distort them, and make subsequent
sealing difficult.

If the gasket being removed is original, it was almost certainly at-
tached with hot glue.  So the best way to remove it is to gently tear
off as much of the old material as possible, them wipe the remnants
with a damp cloth.  It takes time for the glue to soften.  But after
about 20 minutes, all the old gasket scraps and glue will wipe off,
leaving the surface good as new.

Of course there may still be remnants of glue left in the pores of the
wood, but the new gasket should be put on with hot glue as well.  One
of the many virtues of hot glue is that its 'drying phenomenology' is
completely reversible (unlike modern polymer glues).  New glue and old
glue remnants will merge perfectly, if properly done.

The proper choice of gasket material should be guided by the original,
if it can be determined that the gasket being replaced is indeed
original.  If in doubt, use leather.

Leather gaskets in old players were often surprisingly thin, made from
'skivers' left over from pouch leather.  In any case, the replacement
should be as thin as possible, made from some dense but soft leather
like pouch, garment suede or Cambretta.  The cheap, thick cowhide
skiver sold as 'packing leather' nowadays is far too porous and hard
to compress for player work.

Cork must be used with care.  For connecting rigid 'blocky items' like
Ampico logic blocks, it works well.  But for long gaskets, where the
pieces connected may flex, or the screws are widely spaced, it will not
compress evenly, causing distortion or leaks between the screws.  The
cheap 'black speckled' rubber-and-cork gasket material that was once
sold by you-know-who is useless.  Much better cork gasket; mostly cork
chips with only a little bit of silicone rubber binding, can be had from
Organ Supply Industries, or auto supply stores.

A neat way to cut gaskets, especially long ones for channeled boards is
as follows:  Take a strip of masking tape, and rub the sticky side with
the finger, to make it a bit less sticky.  (This takes practice to get
it right.)  Stick the tape over the face to be gasketted.  Using a soft
pencil, or the finger dipped in graphite, rub over the tape, making a
perfect pattern of the holes to be punched, on the back of the tape.
Peel it off, and stick it on the leather strip; then you can follow the
marks on the tape with the punches, with perfect accuracy.  Use only
good 'Scotch' masking tape; the el-cheapo chain store brand is too
sticky, and will surely tear if you try to use it for this trick.

Richard Vance