[CAUT] Shellac Voicing

[Dan Rembold]

Hi Andrew,

Abel Naturals are an excellent choice for a replacement hammer, but no my part I have not yet had to add power to a new set; quite the contrary. 

I'm just wondering, are there just a few notes that sound like they need to be brought up, or the entire piano?  What brand of piano is it, and how old?  On the last Hamburg Steinway O that I used the Abels on, I found that once I needled down the sections that had extra noise, the entire piano had more power.  My guess is that more power was going into tone production, less into unwanted noise.  No hardening was needed in that case.

Also, on your premise that lacquer continues to harden over the life of the hammer, I would tend to disagree.  The apparent continuing hardness must be coming from something else, since lacquer doesn't harden over time.  I've been spraying nitrocellulose off and on for 30 years, and I can still make an impress into lacquer finishes I did years ago, with just a thumbnail.  I may be off by transferring that idea to hammers, but that's my observation.

No matter what you choose to use--shellac, lacquer or acetone-based--where you place the solution into the hammer will have the most effect on tone.  If you do use shellac, the off-the-shelf prepackaged kind is never consistent--you can get flakes from woodworker.com pretty reasonable.  The dedicated shellac thinner is probably best too, since paint-store varieties of denatured alcohol are all various blends of kerosene, naptha, gasoline, and who knows what else.

Let us know how it works out.
Dan Rembold
Auburn University

--- On Mon, 11/23/09, Andrew Anderson <andrew at andersonmusic.com> wrote:

> From: Andrew Anderson <andrew at andersonmusic.com>
> Subject: [CAUT] Shellac Voicing
> To: caut at ptg.org
> Date: Monday, November 23, 2009, 8:37 AM
> I'm looking at using shellac on some
> Abel Naturals that a client is getting impatient waiting for
> play-in on.   I have Zinser spray cans
> available locally.  How much should I dilute this for a
> subtle reinforcement?  Is there a choice in diluting
> solutions?
> 
> I'd like to stay away from lacquer because of its tendency
> to continue hardening over the lifetime of the hammers.
> 
> Thanks,
> Andrew Anderson
>