Because I live in Tasmania, a long way from major industrial centres
(and most of the time I couldn't be happier about that), I've taken to
making my own roll boxes.  I use cardboard about 1.5 to 2 mm. thick.
When I go into the local art supplies shop, I ask for "strawboard," and
that gets me what I want; but this may be a term peculiar to Australia.

Necessary tools include a sharp knife (I use a Stanley knife with re-
placeable blades), a piece of chipboard (for cutting the strawboard
on), short (30 cm.) and long (1 m.) steel rulers (or 1 ft. and 3 ft.
for Imperialists), one of those large green plastic mats that patch-
workers use (for cutting cover papers on; it prolongs the life of the
knife blade), and a set of sheet-steel patterns.

I have patterns for six different sizes of box.  They are:
    1) Small,
    2) Standard (this size takes most QRS popular rolls),
    3) Medium,
    4) Medium Plus (for all those rolls that just won't fit in a medium
       box but which would rattle around in a large box),
    5) Large (fits most big Aeolian classical rolls),
    6) Large Hupfeld (accommodates those big Hupfeld classical rolls
       with great big spool ends).

Each box requires four patterns, two for the box and two for the cover
papers.  The box patterns are simple: they're just a rectangle with a
square cut out of each corner.  You simply cut around the pattern
(keeping your fingers out of the way), score halfway through the
strawboard along what will become the four edges of the top or
bottom, fold the four sides up and hold them together with strips of
masking tape.  Yes, you will need a roll of masking tape.

I also use the dreaded white glue to fix strips of paper up the four
corners of the box on the inside.  This makes for a much stronger
box.  Finally I glue an extra square of strawboard to the bottom of
the box at each end, on the grounds that most of the wear will occur
there.  I don't do this on the inside of the lid; rather I glue a
piece of cover paper there.

The patterns for the cover papers are a little more complicated,
because they allow for tabs to fold round the outside corners and for
fold-overs along the four edges.  But they aren't much more complex.
After all, I made all these patterns myself.  I must admit I did have
access (semi-legally) to a sheet-metal nibbling machine in the
workshop of the University Physics Dept. that employed me until I
retired.

I glue the cover papers onto the boxes with a mixture of starch glue
and white glue.  One probably could use white glue slightly watered
down.  I've never tried this, though.  I rather enjoy the alchemy of
cooking up small batches of starch glue in our microwave oven.
Warning: don't let the glue boil; that ruins it.

An important hint is this: apply the cover-paper glue to the paper, not
to the box.  If you apply the glue to the box, the paper will stretch
and wrinkle and stay that way.  If the paper is wet with glue when you
put it onto the box, it will shrink slightly as it dries.  Often, if
you have inadvertently creased the paper during its application, the
crease will disappear as the paper shrinks.

This doesn't immediately help Tom Hutchinson, who wants 65-note roll
boxes.  As we all know, these are longer than the 88-note variety and
have wooden inserts.  A couple of years ago, I worked my way
through my collection of about 1100 65-note rolls, repairing them and
their boxes, and making new boxes when necessary.  I quailed at the
thought of making a whole new set of patterns, so I used the 88-note
ones.  I cut halfway 'round the pattern and then slid the pattern a
centimetre or so sideways, thus ending up with a longer box.  The
amount to slide did require some thought each time; it could vary by up
to several millimetres, but by operating on the "measure twice, cut
once" principle, I never had a disaster -- or if I did, selective
memory processes have since operated.

On occasion, a 65-note box had a battered top, but a reasonable bottom.
It needed a top a little wider than my pattern would provide.  In that
case I was able to make a new top by sliding the pattern up the card-
board at the appropriate time, as well as sideways.  This required
great concentration, and is not recommended after the ingestion of
significant quantities of mind-altering substances like red wine.  But
it generally worked.

I made wooden inserts for the 65-note boxes, too.  The main point of
these, I think, is to stop the end-pins from chewing their way through
the ends of the box.  I have some U.K. Meloto Dance Rolls (terrific
arrangements, by the way) that were produced during the 1930s when
the Aeolian Company was on the skids.  Some of these boxes never had
wooden inserts, and invariably holes were chewed through the ends of
the box bottoms and sometimes through the ends of the tops, too.

Hence one needs wood that is at least as thick as the end-pin is long.
I find that 11 mm. (7/16") thick dressed pine works well.  In cutting
the notch in the centre of these inserts, I try to ensure that the
roll's spool flanges don't quite touch the floor of the box.  Then all
the weight of the roll is borne by the inserts, and the box should last
much longer.  Originally, steel tacks or pins were often used to fix
the inserts inside the boxes.  These tacks invariably have rusted and
swelled, causing various problems.  So I glue in my inserts.

All this effort is likely to be made only by the truly obsessed, or
the slightly mad.  I'd say it takes nearly two hours to make one 65-
note roll box.  It's just as well that I'm not trying to do this for a
living.

John Phillips
Hobart, Tasmania