Hi Jean-Jacques I imagine you are thinking that once you've steam-bent the soundboard back into a <<crown>> that things are more or less back to normal and subjecting it to some reasonable amounts of humidity will keep it there. This really isnt true... tho one easily understands the thinking. First off, how a soundboard would react to steam <<re-crowning>> if you will is somewhat dependent a bit on what kind of crown the soundboard origionally had, and what caused it to go bad. In any case however... the resulting crown will no doubt be weaker then when the panel was new. How well increased humidity levels can sustain that crown against downbearing from the strings depends pretty much on how much compressive strength there is left in the soundboard panel itself. If it has gone through many seasons with fairly heavy climate changes... its probably pretty non reactive by now. In that case humidity isnt going to help much. You can use dry heat as well, but the results are going to end up about the same. No way around it... there has to be some mechanism for supporting crown yes ?? Cheers RicB I can see that maintaining a crown 'restored', so to speak, by steaming the soundboard would be a problem. I assume this could only be tried on an instrument that has spent much time in a very dry environment and is moved to an area that has normal or even high humidity levels. Whould this change alone be sufficient to maintain the crown? About the glue joints coming apart, I can see that this would indeed by a risk factor. How about using a simple humidifier instead of steaming? Thanks for the comments, Peace Jean-Jacques Granas Warsaw
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