Steinway Backchecks

[Ron Nossaman]

> Ron N,
> Yeah, I'm kinda paying attention.<G> Just liking to know your use. Would 
> you consider Escaine better than Leather? If so, why? Just wondering if 
> checking is more/less consistant......etc.? 

I do consider it better. It comes in rectangular sheets, rather than 
amorphous skins like leather, so there's little waste in cutting it 
to size. It's absolutely uniform in thickness, stiffness, and 
texture from batch to batch, unlike leather, and though it does have 
a grain of sorts, it's not nearly as obvious as leather's, and can 
be generally ignored. Leather stretches very little in one 
direction, and often a whole lot at right angles to that direction. 
Ecsaine is similarly slightly stretchy in all directions, and 
doesn't neck down as stretched like leather. It has a resistance to 
packing and abrasion that is at least as good as leather. Water 
doesn't bother Ecsaine. It just dries out afterward without getting 
stiff. Not that this is typically a factor in piano work, but it 
certainly has been a time or two. In performance on piano parts, it 
is pretty much indistinguishable from leather except it's more 
porous, which is why I'd not recommend it for player work. In all, I 
like the stuff a lot. The only drawback I've found is that it's hard 
to chop to size with a guillotine. The microfiber composition seems 
to leave enough microfibers uncut by the blade, to fight back when 
you try to separate pieces.



>I'm not a big fan of 
> "synthetics", although the escaine used for capping beater hammers or 
> the original use: capping worn CP70-80 hammers, is acceptable. Since 
> this stuff hasn't been around for a great time, just wondering what it's 
> going to do 10-20-30 years down the road.

Seems to me, it's been used in pianos for 20 years or so already, 
and is widely used in shoes and upholstery today as well. This seems 
to be an A-team material, rather than just another high risk 
synthetic pretender.

Six or seven years ago, we went to an annual Cessna (aircraft) 
surplus sale. We bought a few big rolls of Ecsaine cheap, and used 
most of it as curtains in our living room. Cheap curtains from a 
normally quite expensive stuff that looks like deer skin. I was 
showing one of the rolls to a friend, and he asked if it was real 
leather. "Sure is", I said, "From a 50 foot long cow". He got it 
right away.


> Personally, I wish we could get some of the great leather of the past 
> century. (But, of course, that's not possible, since most of that "great 
> leather" was processed with unacceptable chemicals, such as Chromium and 
> is no longer available, in any form. [sigh])
> Regards,
> Joe Garrett, R.P.T.

The more reason to look realistically at something like Ecsaine. Who 
knows? If it becomes a de facto standard material in our industry, 
people might even eventually learn to spell the name.

Ron N