Removing key fronts

[John Delacour]

At 11:20 pm -0600 1/8/07, David Nereson wrote:

>I've done that a couple times, and it works, but if you then just leave
>the ivories on newspaper or paper towels to dry, they will curl, since the
>underside is against the wet paper and stays humid, while the top is open
>to the air and dries faster, unless you sit there all day and keep turning
>them over, so they get equal exposure on both sides.

Let them dry sandwiched between two cloths. If you do get curled 
heads or tails, just resoak them in water and dry them again properly.

>Just yesterday, I removed a set with the wet cloth and hot iron method,
>and even though the top side must get way more steam than the underside,
>for some reason they don't curl.

I don't use a wet cloth; just a single layer of dry cotton sheeting.

>	I've tried soaking very yellow ones in hydrogen peroxide to whiten them
>up, and that worked pretty well, but required several prolonged soakings.
>So the next time, to speed it up, I tried Clorox, and that was too much -
>they came out over-bleached and chalky.  But maybe if it were diluted
>enough . . .(?)

I acquired last week a fine 1895 upright overstrung ( by Julius 
Pfaffe of Berlin) that had had two owners and had hardly ever been 
played.  It came with the original sconces plus the original 
Victorian wadded silk key cover, only slightly frayed!  The ivory was 
perfect except that it was fairly well browned for the usual reasons 
: lack of use, coal smoke and neglect to clean.  Today the ivory is 
white and shiny throughout the scale without having needed any 
polishing.  Practically every piano I do gets the same treatment, and 
that is cream peroxide 60 vol/18% or 40 vol/12% and either sunlight 
or an ultraviolet tube lamp.  You can buy cream peroxide at a 
hairdresser's supply house.  The advantage is that it doesn't need to 
be constantly renewed -- the job is always completed with two thick 
applications, wiping off in between.  You will usually have a few 
ivories pop off as they expand and need to re-glue them, but these 
will always be in the played range of the keyboard and would soon 
have come loose even without the treatment, so it's a good endurance 
test.  None popped off on the Pfaffe because it had not been played. 
You must use peroxide AND u.v. rays either from the sun or a lamp. 
The lamp is slower (say 24 hours from start to finish) but less 
likely to pop the ivory.  The sun will do the job in two hours.

Two people mentioned recently the use by a manufacturer of "pure 
white ivory" as though some makers used cream or yellow ivory.  All 
ivory is pure white when it is put on and only goes cream or brown 
through the way it is treated and the air to which it is exposed. 
What distinguishes good ivory from less good is the grade of ivory 
used and the thickness to which is is cut.  The best ivory has no 
visible "figure" and the worst has a mottled appearance.  In between 
are streaky grades.

JD

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