Hello again, MMD.  During my recent Duo-Art roll repair efforts, I came
across a roll that someone had tried to convert to an 88-note roll,
by gluing onion skin paper over the treble expression perforations.
The bass side of the roll was untouched.  The results must have been
disappointing, because the perpetrator had given up after about the
first fifteen feet.  I really wanted to keep the roll -- it was Harold
Bauer playing the 1st Movement of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata --
so I needed to get that onion skin back off.

What seemed to work was to paint the topside of the tape with water
and then alcohol, and the underside of the roll with alcohol only.
I wanted to keep as much water as possible off the roll paper.  The
only other necessary ingredient was patience, and quite a lot of it.
The roll survived with little obvious damage, and plays properly on my
Stroud upright.

I've kept an eight-inch strip of the onion skin, just to look at, now
and then.  Does anybody know what it is made from, and what adhesive
coated the underside?  I know I could search the Web for an answer, but
I quite enjoyed writing the above, and some MMDer will know for sure.

John Phillips - Hobart, Tasmania