At 16:37 -0800 17/11/08, Debra Feiger wrote: >Thanks for your responses on ivory replacement. JD - What do you use >to clean the keytop? Do you need to fully scrape off any existing >wafer or can you put the new wafer on top? The key top needs to be perfectly clean bare wood and no wood should be removed. If all you have to remove is water-soluble animal glue then you're in luck. Dampen the top with warm water, leave it a few minutes and then wipe it clean with a warm damp cloth. You might have to repeat this process several times but it is easy work and time does most of it. More often than not your predecessor has not been so considerate and you will first have to remove great daubs of some unspecified chemical adhesive. If it's hard and scrapable then you can scrape most of it off and then finish by using acetone or cellulose thinners (or anything that will work) to dissolve it. With luck your predecessor will have been lazy enough to apply the chemical on top of the old animal glue, so once you have removed his gunk you can go back to line 1 and wash the key clean. When the wood is dry, test the ivory head against the tail and, if you have the choice, choose a head that is just a hair's breadth thinner than the front of the tail, the difference to allow for the thickness of the glue line. If there is a big step up to the tail, test it with a dry wafer underneath. Wafers, as I said before, are rarely used, at least in Europe since about 1880, in production work and over here most tuners over the years have used the nearest old tube of whatever disgusting chemical they have at the bottom of their bag to stick the ivory back with their dirty fingers. Even with lots of experience it's difficult to get a perfect result first time every time. I often wonder at the skill of the old key finishers from the head-an tail days and it's a great pity they're no longer about to let us into all their secrets. JD -- ______________________________________________________________________ Delacour Pianos * Silo * Deverel Farm * Milborne St. Andrew Dorset DT11 0HX * England Phone: +44 1202 731031 Mobile: +44 7801 310 689 * Fax: +44 870 705 3241 ______________________________________________________________________
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