Hey Jim, I've never tried the Nitrile bands. I have used the Green textured kind from Forest Classics.
Bought the 2mm and some 1/4" flat that I can't find right now. I used the green yesterday and it works
fine if you don't mind the color. As a rule the Wilesco springs is what I reach for.
I've got a lot of the green textured stuff and just got some new stuff in from China as one batch I couldn't join.
Saw a video of Charlies where he was running a lot of different steam toys in a GPU video and he was using what looked like O ring material.