Hi Allen, Looking at the pictures that you sent, I don't think that I would replace the soundboard especially if the piano was said to have good tone before the fire. From the bubbling that was seen and that the wood did not seem to have any damage, I would just refinish the soundboard at let it go at that. I had a fire in my shop twenty five years ago and had a piano having worse damage it the soundboard than what is shown here. When I removed the old finish I found that the board was not damaged as far as the wood goes. I simply refinished the soundboard. Today you would never guess that anything had ever happened to the piano. I am a volunteer firefighter and have seen some pretty amazing things. Fire is extremely unpredictable and you see things happen that you would never guess and that people would say is impossible. I have seen things in a room that was gutted by fire and yet were totally unharmed. I have also seen little damage in a room as far as actual fire damage and yet j ust about everything was ruined. What happened to the soundboard that you showed is very interesting and yet I would say that it would be hard to explain every part in detail. I could give you paged of information on different theories as to why things happened, wood density, steam, temperature and other things and I still doubt if there would be a good 100% answer for everything. God bless Bill Balmer,RPT Ohio Northern University and the University of Findlay In a message dated 04/17/10 14:21:15 US Eastern Standard Time, akwright at btopenworld.com writes: Our restoration shop just received a piano that's been subjected to a pretty bizarre accident (or perhaps vandalism - we don't know) at a school. We believe a fire burned in a rubbish bin directly underneath this Model A (number 400028). Below you can see the results; the soundboard got so hot that the varnish bubbled on the top side, yet the underside suffered no actual charring or burning (note in the second photo how the soot has been wiped away by my thumb in one spot). The last two photos reveal that enough soot was pouring up through the two holes in the underside (at the sustain pedal and the plate bolt) so as to leave a residue. It seems to me this would be a tricky thing to pull off even if one were deliberately trying to do it; specifically I mean getting the board heated just enough to bubble the varnish, but not so hot it that things caught fire and burned. A pretty flukey event! I suppose there must have been just enough stuff in the bin to burn for just long enough (and hot enough) to cause only this amount of damage. The soundboard seems fine, still has plenty of power etc. We'll be replacing it, since the instrument is covered by insurance and it seems the prudent thing to do. But I wonder if anyone with more knowledge than I about internal wood structure will have an opinion on whether any lasting damage to the board will in fact have occurred, and if so how it might affect the tone or longevity? Sincerely, Allen Wright London, UK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100420/6b1536e9/attachment.htm>
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