Brash Failure

[John Delacour]

At 9:07 am -0700 19/8/06, Joseph Garrett wrote:

>Have you, in your clientele list, a piano of an 1805 age? If not, then you
>would not know of what I speak. How about 1814? No? same answer.

I am familiar with several pianos of this age and older, Joe.  Not 
one of them contains "brash wood" and not one of them shows any sign 
of turning to stone.  Pianos in which I have found crumbly or brittle 
wood have always been kept for a long time in conditions of extreme 
atmospheric pollution.

>  As for the "petrification of wood, we all will not live long enough 
>to find out if it will happen. However, I have seen many examples of 
>many different types of wood that cannot be repaired due to the 
>cellular breakdown of the wood itself. All things deteriorate. 
>(period) IMO Just because you, personally, have not experienced 
>this, does not mean that it isn't so.

Ah, but I have the advantage of not being Adam and benefiting from 
the experience of many generations of archaeologists and considerably 
more generations of trees. The conditions required for the 
petrifaction of wood can be researched at any of the links here:
  <http://tinyurl.com/mxrcm>
and none of the pianos I have dealt with have ever bathed for any 
length of time in water saturated with volcanic ash or the like -- as 
you say, my experience is limited!  So far as I know none of the 
wooden artefacts discovered in the Egyptian tombs had turned to 
stone; in fact even the glue was still good, and all the original 
wood in my 410 year-old house in Italy (quite far from Pompeii and 
Herculaneum, admittedly) is fine.

JD