In response to Don Teach's letter about soaking leather nuts in alcohol
to fight verdigris, let me add my two cents.  It was explained to me
that leather used to be tanned by the "vegetable tanning" method and in
the last 50 years or so, leather is usually tanned by the "chrome
tanning" methods which uses chromium salts.  It is this latter process
that causes the verdigris to form.

Louis Huivenaar is a world-class expert on organs, etc., who lives
in the Netherlands.  He told me that leather nuts made by the Laukhuff
Organ Co. in Germany are still made the old fashioned way.  He was
coming to New York to tune a Mason & Hamlin "Liszt Organ" that I had
mostly rebuilt, and I asked him to bring 100 nuts as a sample.

I have just put them on my 88-65 note push-up Pianola, and I am very
impressed with the quality and uniformity of these nuts.  Naturally,
they have not been on the brass wires long enough to create any
verdigris, but if Louis says they are the best nuts, then I will
believe him.

The nuts are relatively expensive, and shipping them from Germany only
increases the price.  I feel that if a bunch of readers of MMD got
together to order a large quantity of these nuts, we could save some
money.  Does anyone want to join me in ordering these nuts?
Considering the aggravation and damage the American leather nuts cause,
the Laukhuff nuts are cheap.  They come in all different sizes.

Below are two links to the Laukhuff company.  Unfortunately, I cannot
get past the first page of the Internet address, but I know I looked at
their catalog online in April.  Can anyone help figuring out what is
wrong?

  Email: info@laukhuff.de
  Internet: http://www.laukhuff.de/ 

Randolph Herr

 [ Jody found the leather nuts in Chapter 4 of the Laukhuff catalog,
 [ on page 11/14 of the PDF document (585 kb) available at
 [ http://www.laukhuff.de/images/stories/downloads/katalog/ 
 [ http://laukhuff.e-brainstorm.de/images/stories/downloads/katalog/4.pdf 
 [ -- Robbie