There has been some discussion recently about experimental systems
for perforating rolls, especially rolls with larger perforations, some
of them cut for small organs.

About fifty years ago such experiments were fairly common.  At that
time there were only a few operating perforators in the country and
they were cutting primarily 88-note rolls.  Roll perforation with razor
blades or spring-loaded punches were not very successful, nor were
methods such as sandblasting through a rubber-coated original roll.

Sometimes the perforations were burned through the paper.  This is not
quite as absurd and impractical as it sounds.  Smoking tobacco was then
common and the country was flooded with sheets of white paper simply
marked: "Light here!"  A message or image had been printed with an
invisible colorless saltpeter [potassium nitrate] base liquid.  The
message very quickly burned away leaving a beautiful, ornate lace-like
calligraphic and artistic image.

Young men, fearful of speaking to a real live girl, might simply hand
her such a paper sheet.  Other boys and men were not so reticent and
the messages were often "not very nice at all," as my grandmother was
wont to say with considerable heat!  As tobacco smoking started to die
out and a few buildings burned down and a few people burned up, the
inflammable sheets fell out of favor.

Attempts are sometimes made today with some success at duplicating
rolls using variations of this almost forgotten method.  The roll to be
copied was evidently sealed with something like spray lacquer and was
laid on top of a blank roll mounted in some sort of horizontal tracker
frame or roll repair frame.

In a dark room, a mixture of saltpeter and silver nitrate was then
applied to the original roll with a foam rubber roller, leaving the
perforation spots printed on the new blank roll.  A bright 8 mm
home-movie-type flood lamp was mounted behind a large magnifying glass
and this assembly was manually moved from side to side as the original
roll and the chemically-treated blank roll underneath slowly advanced
together.  The white-hot focus point of light blackened the treated
spots on the new roll and burned out the perforations while a vacuum
hose with a soft paint brush sucked up the smoke and ash and blew all
outdoors.

This experiment can be simplified somewhat.  Nowadays, very hot
600-watt and duplex 600-watt quartz shop lamps are sold everywhere.
It is possible to simply lay the original roll on top of a new blank
_dark-colored_ roll.  Very large glass magnifiers are now available
at educational and scientific toy stores.  The focused light shines
through the perforations in the white roll to be copied and burns the
holes in the new duplicate dark roll.

A thermal roll "perforator" might be practical today for burning out
a small number of special rolls.  For faster roll production, a scanner
could be set up by mounting both the lamps and the magnifier on a
scanning drive such as the windshield wiper mechanism from a junked
truck.

The most basic experiment can be carried out in bright sunlight with
black felt-tip markers and a large hand-held glass.  But many roll
papers have a high clay content and some treatment may be needed for
a fast, clean sharp burn.  If saltpeter is not available, fireworks can
be cut open with razor blades and the silvery powder found inside mixed
with a black pigment.

Jim Lynch