Hi Terry, personally I always replace valves with plastic (Ventile) because theyre easy to get hold of, consistent and reliable. Others may speak up for leather.
Advice on this forum seems to be generally, dont re-use valves. Given their cost relative to the time involved I think that makes sense.
If you havent got a local supplier Charlie Marshall in Scotland is excellent, very helpful and knows what hes talking about.
http://www.cgmmusical.co.uk/CGM_Musical_Services/Welcome.html[/url]
On refurbishment projects theres a very strong and active online forum and community at
http://www.melodeon.net OK they are mainly talking about diatonic button boxes, but when it comes to reeds, valves and blocks, most of it is the same - youve just got more to deal with!
Thinking about your Atlantic project I was wondering whether you may be able to make it playable on restricted registers before youve done the whole job.
Obviously you want to get all the reed blocks out and give everything a clean to start with so youre not re-contaminating your work.
You also want to be very certain where reeds came from and go back to. Each rank of reeds from each block could be laid out in a row, wrapped up in waxed paper and carefully labelled, even before they are cleaned.
Is low humidity in winter an issue where you are? I think Id prefer to get the reeds stripped off the blocks, get the reed blocks cleaned, and then put the blocks without reeds back in the accordion reasonably quickly. I could be wrong but Id prefer not to leave the blocks out of the accordion for any longer than necessary. (Probably worrying unnecessarily, particularly with a metal bodied Atlantic, but with concertinas, I dont aim to have the wooden parts apart for more than a few hours. They are very willing to warp!)
Best of luck!
(Mind you, if youre anything like the farmers I know round here youre very used to seeing a job, getting the tackle you need, and getting on with it! After all, an accordion is just low pressure hydraulics!)
Tom
