The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I just watched this video about a hot stapler plastic repair tool and thought that this might work to repair cracked wax cylinders. It is a similar repair to the one used by the cylinder doctor.
You could also just heat your own staples with a heat gun or torch and get the same effect, although this machine has a heat control...
https://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-hot-s ... ystem.html

I am not sure if that will work. It would be worth a try, if you could borrow one from someone and try it, as opposed to purchasing it. The one problem with metallic soap is that if it is heated it shrinks, you can't use cylinder wax to fill pits in cylinders,as when it cools, it pops out of the divot, as it shrinks. The shrinkage for cylinder compound is between 1.2-3% depending on aluminum content and other factors. The Cylinder doctor does use very shallow staples to bridge broken sections together he heats the shallow staple in the alcohol lamp flame, and then carefully bridges the crack with the staple, it has very shallow tines, so it don't go through the cylinder surface. He has a selection of reddish, orange, dark brown, cream, black, tan, buff and other colors of dental wax, which does not shrink when cooled, he uses a dental tool to fill in chips with this wax, he then uses a very soft rag, to buff the dental wax, and then he plays it, to create the missing groove structure in the dental wax. Mike has done this for an extremely long time, and his skill is unmatched by anyone, and it is way harder than it looks. I have tried to repair cylinders, and never had luck with it, other than sometimes searing the inside surface with a quick touch of a heated tool, As I said this does not work often.

Shawn, you know way more about it than me, so I defer to your analysis. I just thought it looked like it might work to repair cylinders, but since I have never tried to fix them, I haven't got a clue about the real issues with repairing cylinders. It just looked like a cool tool and I love tools whether I need them or not...