Hi all, Jeffrey Wood and Craig Smith wrote in about stiffeners in
Coinola box pumps supplying both vacuum and pressure.  When I replied
to Scotty Greene's post I assumed that the pump had been "restored"
by someone already [130705 MMDigest].  I reread his post to see why
I would have thought that.

Scotty did ask if he should remove the _motor_ cloth from the pump
and put stiffeners in there, but they are covered with pump cloth or
bellows type cloth from the factory, are they not?  Would the factory
have used "motor" cloth, which is only a few thousandths inch thicker
than pneumatic cloth?  So I assumed that someone had done it over
because the wrong cloth was used.

Of course if the cloth was original cloth and no stiffeners were in
there, you would not change the design of the pump but you would do
what the factory did and not put them in if they didn't have them in
the first place.

I always tried to do what the factory did as closely as I could.  If
I had a pump like that in the shop and it was obviously done over
by someone, and I had never seen a Coinola pump before, I would ask
someone if the stiffeners were there or I would call another restorer
and ask them if the stiffeners were in that pump.  I assumed that if
you tore down an original pump in the shop you would do it like the
factory did it.  I always used leather for my pumps, though.

Tony Marsico - Bayernhof Museum
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania