In MMD 131115, Larry Mayo mentions Bilon Pneumatic Cloth.  I rebuilt
my first player in the early 1970s and, never having used hide glue,
decided to try Bilon cloth and PPCo's "Player Piano Glue".  The player
is a Stroud Metrostyle-Themodist upright and it is still going strong,
forty years later.

This piano gets played much more often than any of my other players
and it got a good workout last Friday evening, when we had a Player
Piano Night, organised by my daughter Alison.  She, her husband and
two small boys live just five minutes' walk away, and some of her
neighbours had expressed interest in my player pianos, and that was
the trigger for the evening.  Four separate families turned up with
assorted children ranging in age from 6 years to 13 years.

Alison's oldest boy, Nicholas, is about to turn 9, and has completely
mastered operating our Gulbransen Recordo upright.  He kept it operating
with a long string of fox trots, his favorite music (at present).

I couldn't persuade any of the children to have a go at pedalling a
roll on the Stroud, but several of their Mums and Dads did and seemed
to enjoy the experience.  Who wouldn't?

One family was Japanese; the father is in Tasmania on sabbatical
leave.  His son, who is 13, impressed me mightily when he sat down
at the piano with the sheet music for a Gershwin etude, and played it
with only a few stumbles.

I've used hide glue and regular rubberized cotton pneumatic cloth on
all my other players, but I don't regret using Bilon on that first one.

John Phillips - in Hobart, Tasmania