Disinfecting water damaged keys

[Bill Ballard]

List.

My longtime High School called me to look at a 30-year old Baldwin 
Hamilton 243 which had a ceiling leak drip on it. The damage (besides 
sitting in generally high humidity overnight) was limited to the keys 
and front bushings for the bottom 3/4 of the compass. The keys have a 
dark ink stain where mildew set in, some of the front rails bushings 
stayed attached to the front pins instead being lifted out with the 
keys. The really wet bushings had pulled off of the mortise walls. 
Keystick B27 had swollen so at its front that the bottom now at 
0.909" was wider enough that the original 0.878", that the plastic 
front had split open at the bottom and the keytop plane had cupped. 
That one still has some drying out to do.

The piano is now parked (with case parts off) in a storage room with 
plentiful skylights

I can re-bush 3/4 of the fronts, and trim keys which badly wind or 
warp. I don't know about the long range implications of the mildew 
stains which run too deeply to sand or blast out. HS practise rooms 
can over the summer trap humidity, reviving the spores buried on the 
keys, making everything smell like a wet sneaker and sending students 
home with allergic reactions.

Obviously, for insurance purposes here, a new keyboard, if required, 
would cancel any repairs. Is there a way of disinfecting this 
keyboard which (hopefully) doesn't involve more liquids?

TIA for your considerations. Be sure and send back reports of Chicago 
for all of us unable to attend.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"I work harder than God. If he'd hired me to do the Creation, I'd 
have finished by Thursday"
     ...........Jenna Elfman in "Keeping the Faith"
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