Piston assembly part 3 - VW rings

I've looked into the piston design in some detail now but I'm undecided as to how to proceed. I suspect you are correct in assuming that a plain o-ring will work just fine for the thousand-cycle per year range of home use. After all, the V & W seals on my home machine have been replaced maybe twice in twenty years. Silicon o-rings would likely be more prone to spiral failure as the original piston is not designed with the softer material in mind. I had decided to try out a drop-in replacement piston design using off the shelf silicon quad rings but unfortunately, the 50mm bore of the classic Aurora group does not play well with AS568 (aka inch sized) o-rings. 50mm sits at an awkward spot between inch sizes which will mean either too much squeeze (compression of the ring's cross section) or too much stretch (elongation of the circumference). The correct metric size quad ring does exist, but I haven't found a supplier yet. This is compounded by the material requirement: silicon is rare, FDA approved silicon even more rare. In short: for now it's back to Faema V and W rings.

On the build front, I am anxiously waiting for another shipment of parts which has been held up because a few minor bits were back-ordered.
When it arrives, I should be in possession of every single part required to complete the very first machine (finally, yessssssssss)! Maybe in time for Christmas....

I have been busy with supplier negotiations for the last while and I don't have too much concrete to show.

I did put two wood blanks through the process for making the handles:

...quite a long time later:

These just need some oil.