[CAUT] Humidity Damage

[Ron Nossaman]

On 1/3/2011 7:00 PM, James Patrick Draine wrote:
>
> On Jan 3, 2011, at 6:52 PM, Ed Sutton wrote:
>
>> Patrick-
>> What do you know about tallow buckets?
>
> Ed, just the "passed down" traditions in PTG events. Not sure exactly
> who related the tale, someone like Eric Schandall, John Patton, or Scott
> Jones (sometime in the past decade), relating how some factory veteran
> quoted his old supervisor who would have somebody pick up a barrel of
> mutton tallow from some meat processing plant at regular intervals, for
> the action department. Not exactly "proof."
> Oral traditions are notoriously error prone, especially with me as the
> last filter. Anyone else attend the classes where I heard this version?
> I had also heard the tallow connection as being ascribed to Fred
> Drasche, but I don't recall hearing those words directly from his mouth.
> As for chemical analysis, maybe you should ask David Snyder; Willis and
> he may have had that done.

I've often wondered about this stuff. Delving into the details of 
Steinway (or any) history, you get a different story at every turn. 
Seems to me that the reality would more fit the times, and they used 
what was easily and cheaply available at any given time with no real 
hard standards. For a three year period, perhaps, one of the fore 
finishers picked up a bucket of name on request slippery stuff every 
couple of weeks when the local eatery changed their deep fryer fat. Next 
year, someone else got something else in another alley. This sort of 
thing was common, and undocumented because it didn't really seem to 
matter at the time - at least to the employees. Still happens today, all 
over the world.
Ron N