A few months ago, Horace Greeley, and then Roger Jolly, mentioned removing keytop solution from a set of hammers by saturating with acetone and letting it run down the tails (more or less). While reading their description, I thought to myself (not for the first time) "Wouldn't it be great if you could put the hammers in solvent and soak the stuff out?" But this time, I thought a little further, and decided that was possible. We often take a stack and set it on its tail (jack tails and hammershank flanges down) on a workbench, and pull the hammers forward so they are resting on the bench surface. So, I thought, why couldn't they be resting in a trough of acetone or thinner? Just a matter of finding or making an appropriate sized/shaped trough. I looked around the shop, and the first promising thing my eye lit on was an empty one gallon thinner can. I took tin snips, and cut down a side about four inches from a corner, then diagonally across the bottom, up the adjacent side, and diagonally across the top. Ending up with a triangular trough. To make it stand up, I cut each of the sides back an inch or so, and bent it down, so the trough ended up looking like a letter "M" in cross section. Made a couple of these. (Other, more elegant designs are obviously possible, but I tend to be a "down and dirty" type - if it works and doesn't cost anything, that's fine with me). I had a perfect candidate to try my notion on: a "D" with rocks of indeterminate content (don't know what the other tech used, but the entire set was saturated hard as any set of hammers I've run across). I had tried to make the piano "more bearable" to play this fall by steaming and cross-stitching, with an agreement to do major work this spring when I had time and the hall was free. The steaming had minimal effect, and the cross-stitching just made it almost bearable to play. So a couple weeks ago I pulled the stack, put it on end, and pulled hammers forward into my troughs (it takes six troughs this size to hold the whole set). I filled up each trough with lacquer thinner mixed with acetone. It started turning milky right away. I let them soak for fifteen minutes, swishing gently every few minutes. THen pulled the hammers out of the bath, pressed a couple layers of paper towel against them (crowns and shoulders of the whole lot) to pull as much solvent as possible, and then took a dry paper towel and quickly pressed it against each hammer individually (sides as well). I repeated this procedure with the rest of the set, then did it again. First time I used half and half acetone to lacquer thinner (lacquer thinner to retard drying), second time two or three to one acetone to lacquer. Results: quite gratifying. Sounds like a piano again. I have to wait a couple weeks before I can get adequate time in the hall again, but have very high hopes for the final results. Hope others will find this helpful. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico
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