hello and ? re weird bright yellow fuzz on pressure bar

[holly quigley]

Hi everyone!

Been an associate member for a while, I work as a tuner/technician full-time
in GA... just usually too busy to keep up with the mailing list. Was
actually once on here, but deleted my email account and can't find my old
password - d'oh!

Anyway, I just have a really quick question - I've searched the archives and
even google, and no luck.

For the second time now in the past month, I have come across a spinet (two
separate ones in the past month), with a layer of this weird almost
neon-yellowish-greenish fuzz/dust coating the pressure bars. The screws for
the pressure bars are completely clean and untouched - it looks like it has
to be either some weird chemical reaction, a fungus or mold (but on plain
metal like that - ??) or Idunno - was there ever a time when pressure bars
were coated in some kind of faux suede or something that would break down?
It actually looks almost like school-issued yellow chalk coating them, but
it's an even layer over the entire bar, and as I said, the screws have none
of this stuff on them. I'm a little concerned because when you just barely
touch this stuff the powder just showers right off of it. I didn't have a
mask or gloves at the time, and I hope I don't have to worry about being
exposed to some kind of poisonous chemical residue resulting from a reaction
between the pressure bars and something in the air. The two pianos appeared
to be different makes - the one today was a Mehler & Sons (I think - I might
be screwing the name up), and the other was a Mendelssohn spinet, both about
30+ years old.

Does this sound at all familiar to anyone? In this case, I'd be more than
happy to wind up sounding like a complete newbie dolt who didn't recognize
something completely harmless and common...

Thanks in advance!
-Holly Quigley
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