Attended a class on smoke damage some time ago. For cleaning the tuning pin area, and sometimes hitch pins: spray the cleaner (ammonia based, orange based, dishwashing detergent based, whichever), work in with a paint brush, then use an air compressor set low to blow the grunge and liquid towards a waiting cloth. Amazing how much schmutz you can get out, without leaving the liquid to soak in. Warmer is more effective. I remember talk of using carpet cleaner, etc. together with cheesecloth. I tried it and never found it as effective as the above method. In addition, just like furniture polish getting silicone to repel dust, most carpet cleaners claim to repel stains. I can just imagine what silicone could do to tuning stability. Eeeech! Dave Stocker, RPT Tumwater, WA From: Don Mannino Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 19:14 To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] waterproof plate bushings The bushings are just hard maple. The fit tends to be pretty snug, so it's not likely the soda went down very far. You can lift the coils off and clean the whole area with light sprays of warm water in a spray bottle. Use a toothbrush and some cloths, and it will probably clean up very well. The bushings will probably look dark, but no real harm in that. Put the coils back on, replace the rusty strings, and you will have disturbed the pinblock a minimum amount. But I like new strings - I'd just replace all of them, coiling them on another pin and transferring the coils back onto the freshly cleaned pins. That way you don't have to spin them so much. Don Mannino ----- Original Message ----- From: Zeno Wood To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 3:11 PM Subject: [pianotech] waterproof plate bushings Just wanted to get a couple of opinions: A nice Kawai RX-2, about 14-15 years old, which must have done something really bad in a past life, because now it's been condemned to a high school auditorium. A few years back someone spilled some sort of sugary drink all over the tuning pin area, and I've been asked to do something about it. The interesting thing is that it's not in bad shape all things considering. There's a sticky mess all over the plate in the tuning pin area. The strings are not rusty except for some tuning pin coils. The agraffes look pretty nasty, but again, the strings don't show any rust. The tuning pins feel ok, and the bottom of the pinblock is clean. It seems like the plate bushings prevented the spill from going straight into the pinblock. (are they using waterproof plate bushings?) Also, the action is fine. How long would it take for pinblock contamination to manifest? It's been 3-4 years since the spill. Seems like all that's needed is a cleaning, and replacing a bunch of strings. -Zeno Wood, NYC -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091120/c40b1d60/attachment-0001.htm>
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