Erratic idle & stumbling acceleration

[bunnyc]

New to us '29 Tudor with '30 engine. My husband is sorting out our engine problems. Here's what we've got so far: Warmed up the engine for 3 minutes with a vacuum gauge connected to the wiper port on the intake manifold. Vacuum fluctuates 17-20 at idle. Did a compression test; results were 85, 86, 86, 89 (1-4). Set the used points to 0.020" and adjusted spark according to Les Andrews. Two notches down from full retard the light came on.
Auto-lite Plugs are gapped to 0.032. All are firing. Plugs are dry sooty black when we took them out.
Ran unlit propane torch around the intake manifold and carb mounting gasket without any improvement to the erratic idle.
He's thinking that cleaning/rebuilding the carb is our next step.
We welcome any suggestions.