No 25 leather re-seal question

Thanks for the update- I didn't know any of them used a brass air tube!

I wish I could insert this info a few pages back, but I’ll settle for tacking it on here. I stumbled across some more information on what we were calling the “capped” style of air tube.

This style was designed in 1938, and patented (2,204,372) in 1940. These 1950 pictures show the three Daisy air tube assembly stations. (My wife believes they could have splurged on more comfortable seats for the ladies!)

It would appear the shafts of the air tubes, and the caps, were pre-assembled together before reaching this point, and from here these ladies would position the body of the air tube on the cap for the final crimping action, making the assembly complete. Hopefully the more shop-minded among us can explain what is going on here, as I may be totally wrong in what I am looking at.

 The last step would have been the slipping on the leather seal and the back-up steel washer.

It wasn’t many years after this picture was taken that the air tube evolved into the neoprene washer era and an entirely new air tube design began.

Hello Kenjo7. For this post I had an old air tube assembly already missing its air tube, so I just put the base into a vise and used a screwdriver to back the crimps off enough for removal. The cap's metal crimps  had enough integrity as to not 'snap off' when straightened out. Once off I did not think another air tube could be soldered on--but more nimble members out there might think otherwise.

I don't think the original air tube was soldered onto the 'cap' because in the patent drawing the air tube is flared on the cap end, so the cap-and-air tube assembly was probably machine-pressed together and then crimped onto the body for final use. When I mentioned soldering I meant as a possible repair.