I fear Lester Hawksby will have trouble running a punching machine
where the paper is pulled through by the take-up spool rotation, rather
than by feed rollers.  He will be totally reliant on the paper rolling
up tightly without any tendency to slip.  This can happen in any player
piano and if it happens just for a fraction of a second on the punch it
will ruin the roll.  Also, piano rolls are cut in multiples, so he will
need to engineer that number of take-up spools, all geared together.

It appears that many original piano rolls are cut without tempo
compensation, and this is perfectly adequate when the roll is a short
tune, such as a popular song.  Longer rolls should really be made with
compensation, but as long as they are played on a foot operated player,
no compensation is acceptable.  Long rolls made for electrically driven
players and reproducing pianos should really be cut with compensation
but I am not aware if this is the case.

Weber orchestrions do not need compensation as they have a well-designed
roll frame where the paper is advanced by a pair of pinch rollers and
the take-up spool is run through a slipping clutch.   As far as I know,
Weber were the only manufacturers who went to such lengths to eliminate
speed build-up in the music by this means.  This method also means that
they could make up composite rolls without needing to bother about speed
build-up in the arrangement and where in the composite roll that tune
was positioned.

Many years ago I wrote an article about this very subject and how
I dealt with it when arranging music rolls for a custom built
orchestrion.  You can find this in The Music Box, Vol 11 No 3, pages
110-112.  Autumn 1983.  Back-issues of The Music Box can be found on
our website but this link will get you right there:

https://www.mbsgb.org.uk/TMB/index.html 

Sincerely,
Nicholas Simons