Greetings listees,
I've been having consistent trouble in my endeavors to replace
keytops. I really wish to do a good job at this so if you could share with
me what you do I'd greatly appreciate it. I had tried the Peterson Jig
using essentially two parallel rails to ride a router on and the key is
clamped beneath. The theory is that this will evenly trim the tops down.
Not So! After several sets of disasters that I did more than twice the work
on making them right, I have finally built Bill Spurlocks jigs to use in
conjunction with a rotary planer. This has been the ticket in the planning
department as I have never made a set of keys quite so even before.
Now I'm at the trimming stage and I am using another of Bill's (I
think) jigs where a piloted bit comes up through the center of the jig
which is a ever so slightly tapered away from center and covered with denim
material to prevent scratches on the keytop. The key is inverted and the
pilot bearing rides against the side of the key and trims any overhanging
plastic. This is the part I'm having trouble with. It seems that either I'm
not holding the key steady enough or there are some imperfections in the
key that I'm not seeing, or there's stuff on the table from the last key. I
really don't know what it is but I'm not winding up with a straightly
trimmed side. Can anyone suggest a different method of a different jig?
I've been thinking of a 1" belt sander as trimmer. Anyone ever use one of
those for this purpose? Any and all ideas greatly appreciated. I'm so happy
with how the planing went I don't want to ruin this in the trimming stage.
Greg Newell
mailto:gnewell@ameritech.net
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC