I picked up the Octane magazine today, it is quite a story. The rescue of the machine was something of a fluke, getting exactly the right materials to make the fabric meant having them made special, and the manufacturing process is surprisingly complex. If I read the article right, they start with a special weave of cloth then run it thru the machine 22 times building up coat after coat of a synthetic  material, then they varnish it after that.   Given what they must have spent buying and recond