Soundboard Swabs

[Lance Lafargue]

Tom,
Just a caution.  Those swabs come with soap(tooth cleaner) and
mint/mouthwash.  So, be careful.  You're supposed to be able to just wet
them, and wash your mouth out.  See if they make just a plain one,
w/nothing that can leave residue on the piano.
Lance Lafargue, RPT
New Orleans Chapter
Covington, LA.
lafargue@iamerica.net

----------
> From: Tom Cole <tcole@cruzio.com>
> To: pianotech <pianotech@ptg.org>
> Subject: Soundboard Swabs
> Date: Tuesday, September 09, 1997 7:18 PM
> 
> It is not often that I undertake the job of thoroughly cleaning a
> soundboard (when the strings are still on) but today's Yamaha C3D needed
> a good swabbing. Near as I can tell, some little animal upchucked on
> about half of the area under the strings from dampers to tenor bridge,
> even got some overspray on the tuning pins but spared the action,
> thankfully.
> 
> Since I haven't carried a soundboard steel for quite a while (yeah,
> right, I'm going out to the shop to get it right after this post), I was
> caught a little off guard but requested a bowl of warm soapy water and
> some soft rags and got started cleaning what I could reach. After a
> while, the customer brought out a whole box of Q-tips and also some
> larger swabbing type devices I'd never seen before called Ora-Swab, no
> doubt used in dentistry. They consisted of a small block of sponge about
> 1/2 x 5/8 x 1" long stuck on the end of a 6-inch, thick-walled plastic
> tube which worked very well to clean under the strings, ala Spurlock's
> soundboard tools only much more absorbent.
> 
> She gave me a few of them to put in my kit but I thought that since they
> weren't made to reach, for example, the unreachable area under the bass
> strings (I had to pry strings apart quite a bit) that one could make a
> similar absorbent part by cutting up a sponge into different shapes and
> sizes and gluing them onto longer pieces of tubing. The resulting tools
> would not scratch the SB finish and would be suitable for plain old dust
> or could be used wet for spills.
> -- 
> Thomas A. Cole RPT
> Santa Cruz, CA
>