Protection from CA fumes

[Susan Kline]

>
>         ventilation, ventilation, ventilation
>
>This is even more critical if performing any of these larger CA tasks in
>a customer's home.
>
>Mark Potter

---------------------------------------

        amen, amen, amen

There's another question which should be considered, IMHO.
We're used to treating a whole pinblock when certain notes
get troublesome. It seems reasonable, if one is going leave
a piano on its back for a week after pouring in sticky goop,
to make sure that one will not have to come back and do it
again.

However, the easiest way to keep from gassing oneself
with cyanide fumes is to avoid using large amounts of
CA at one time, and to avoid using the "kicker" at all.
My question is, how often do we really need accelerator?
If conditions are reasonably good, the CA sets up within
a minute, anyway.

Personally, being of a modest temperament about most
things, I prefer treating the pins which are causing the
problems, rather than treating every pin in the piano.
The reason I'm going to work on treating bridge pins
in an upright without tilting is so that the repair
can be done with small amounts of CA, as needed, without
gassing up the whole house.

I'm not saying that the respirator isn't a good idea, or
that sometimes a whole bunch of CA is the only answer.
For instance, when a bass bridge is split at every
bridge pin it's going to take a lot of CA or epoxy to
fix it. By the way, one time when I fixed a bridge like
that using a ton of epoxy and a hair dryer, I felt
really crummy for a few days afterwards.

My thinking at the moment is that we haven't fully
grasped the possibilities of CA glue, so we're using it
in old procedures, just substituting it for pin dope
or Titebond, etc. The short bond time and ease of use
means that perhaps we can use CA only on the notes
which really need it, as part of normal tuning or
minor repair. This would be like replacing a broken
elbow or two every few years, as opposed to doing
them all at a single sitting. Which approach will
work best in which situation is a judgement call,
IMHO.

CA glue or hot epoxy which you _don't_ use won't make
you sick, or anyone else sick, either ...

Susan