I've used the hammer softener as well, but BEWARE! It's easy to make them pretty well worthless. I used it on a practice room and one DMA student left me a note that they sounded like "Nerf" hammers! Way dead. However, filing a bit and needling brought them back to "near dead" for another year, but I think I now have to replace them. Hint...use the hammer softening touch very carefully! Might work, though, if your really conservative with it. why not just needle the heck out of them? Just a time thing? Paul Gerald Cousins <cousins_gerry at msn.com> Sent by: caut-bounces at ptg.org 12/08/2008 03:11 PM Please respond to caut at ptg.org To CAUT <caut at ptg.org> cc Subject Re: [CAUT] Getting lacquer out of hammers Israel, I don't know af any way to successfully remove lacquer from hammers. I would have to believe that, like any felt, once a foreign liquid is introduced there is no practical way of totally removing it. That being said, I have had very good results in tonal restoration of hammers by using hammer softner from Pianotek supply. Their item # THS page B2 I think the current price is around 5.95 for 8oz. I use it to soak the shoulders 10:30 down to 8:00 and 1:30 down to 4:00 then needle the top V area to balance everything out. Specific technique is to use a hypo bottle (standard needle) and place it around the 9:00 and 3:00 position then squeeze the bottle watching the soaking to the areas stated. I've used this technique on about 10 or 20 sets of various manufacturers as well as over lacquered SS with consistent success. I would suggest to hang them on a stack and listen to them on the piano to aid in determining the effectiveness as well as a before/ after reference for additional applications. Good luck, I think you'll be able to make it work out. Gerry Cousins West Chester University > From: custos3 at comcast.net > To: caut at ptg.org > Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 19:20:14 +0000 > Subject: [CAUT] Getting lacquer out of hammers > > Hello, > > I know that there is a thread about this somewhere in the list archives, but the archives went away with the server move and won't be back in time to do this over Winter Break, if possible, so... > > I have a set of overlacquered Steinway hammers sitting on the shelf here at SFSU that I would love to be able to re-use - since our parts budget here is fast disappearing into the 12 billion dollar California deficit. Is there any way to get most of that lacquer out of these hammers, and if so, how? > > Israel Stein > Piano Technician > Creative Arts Technical Services > San Francisco State University > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20081208/4faf620e/attachment-0001.html>
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