[CAUT] lacquer "flushing"

[Allen Wright]

Colleagues,

I'm not certain this ideahas been discussed on the list, but I seem to 
remember that it has, else it might not have occurred to me as a 
serious option. I pass it on in case it might be useful for others in a 
similar situation.

I voiced a 7 year old Baldwin L for a store. A church was interested in 
buying it, but wanted it voiced up - particularly the entire bass 
section, which was very noticeably quieter and with a different tone 
than the rest.

Some light keytop solution on some notes brought up the treble end 
nicely to match the middle, but I felt that the bass needed a bigger 
boost, so in the shop I gave it a 4 : 1 hit with lacquer. The majority 
of my lacquering experience has been with Steinways (lots of them), and 
this 4 : 1 solution probably would've been about perfect for that. But 
I'm steadily realizing that Baldwin hammers react more testily to 
hardeners. The bass was way louder than I intended when I got it back 
in. Mild panic set in, as needling obviously wasn't curing the problem.

I thought about steaming, or perhaps using the Pianotek hammer 
softener, but didn't have either in the car. So I decided to try 
flushing out some of the lacquer with acetone. On with the fume mask 
and out to the back porch with a nice breeze blowing: I forcefully 
squirted a good half bottle of acetone down onto each hammer, with the 
overflow going through my funnel into another bottle.

When they dried, I could feel that they were obviously softer. When I 
put the action back in the piano the next day the tone was right where 
I had intended it to be, with the bass perhaps even slightly softer 
than the mid-section now.

I imagine the lacquer in the strike point area tends to be flushed down 
into the shoulders, with more remaining there than in the top. Which is 
probably not a bad scenario.

It had been an act of skeptical semi-desperation, but it worked 
perfectly. The phrase "snatching victory from the jaws of defeat" ran 
through my head as I drove home in great relief.

Oh, and the bottle of acetone I used is now slightly yellow with the 
lacquer that it pulled out. It's probably more like the ratio I should 
have used to start with! I'll save it for some future job involving a 
light hardener solution.

For what it's worth,

Allen Wright, RPT
NKU, Xavier University
Cincinnati