At 05:14 PM 03/03/1998 -0500, you wrote: Hi, I have steamed and bent keys to straighten them. They never come out like before, but with lots of trial and error (and some sanding) they come out close enough to work well. Bending a steamed piece of wood is always interesting because it is hard, if not impossible, to tell how much to bend it. The key will have to be "over bent" past where it will hopefully wind up, because it will spring back. I found the following worked OK: holding the key over a steam pot, rotating it around in the general area where I had determined I wanted the bend to take place until the wood was hot (not soaked with steam/water), making the bend and adding any twist that might be necessary, holding that for a few minutes and seeing how close it was, repeating until it was close enough, waiting for a few days, checking the results, redoing the whole process. I have tried using a vise and a weight, but found the free hand method worked much better and is actually pretty quick. It helps to have the two neighbor keys and the key frame in the shop. Good luck, >Problem: one warped key on a Baldwin console. >The key has a dog leg to the left. It has a key button on the underside. My >initial thought is to lay the key on its side, with the bend up, and put a >weight on the top of the bend, to allow it to straighten out. But I am not >sure if this will work. > >Any other ideas? Ken Hale, RPT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PianoDB, PianoDB95, PianoDB97 Manage your Piano Service Business YourTraySpell, on-the-fly spell checker D C AL CODA http://www.dcalcoda.com/ kenhale@dcalcoda.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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