Hi Folks, Just a comment about which leather to use on the bellows
(feeders) and reservoir of a hand-cranked organ. There are lots of
places on an organ where you should worry about leaks but the leather
on the bellows assembly isn't one of them.

If you will picture the leather for a typical bellows laid out on
a flat surface, you will see that the stiffeners cover virtually 95%
of the area. With the stiffeners glued to the leather with something
like fish glue, that area is virtually air tight. The corners and the
narrow places where the leather flexes are the only places air could
possibly leak.

A better place to worry about leaking is the valves and pallets, but
the culprit here is around the edges, not leakage through the leather.
In fact, one of the tightest bellows jobs I ever did was made from
cardboard with leather only at the corners.

By the way, Columbia Organ Leathers is a great place to buy leather --
good products and nice people -- but what they call "flap leather" is
much too heavy for a hand organ. Better for a piano or large organ.

Regards,
Craig Smith
Upstate New York