At 16:26 -0400 28/9/07, Willem Blees wrote:
>You can use CA glue...
Dear Lord please NO!!
I do a lot of ivory replacement including covering whole keyboards in
recycled ivory and I use hide glue whitened with titanium dioxide
("titanium white", a dense white which our forefathers would have
been happy to have at their disposal.
If you do a lot of this work it is worth setting up a go-bar frame,
but the clamps (mine are from Schaff) are pretty good if you take
precautions.
If find it good if I'm doing a few or a lot to paint the glue on
quite thin and let it set, then paint on another coat and so on until
you have a good dense white covering spread very evenly on the key
top. Then let it dry completely.
When you come to stick on the ivory, moisten the glue by brushing it
lightly with cold water and leave it for a couple of minutes to
soften the glue. In the meantime make sure the bronze clamping block
is perfectly clean, set everything up so that you will lose no time
and drop the block in very hot water for a moment or two. Then take
it out very hot, quickly towel it dry and position it on the ivory
ready to clamp down. Besides the main clamp it is good to use a pair
of light soft-jawed clamps at the sides of the key so that the ivory
is aligned with the sides, or a least one of them, and will not slip
as you tighten the bronze block down.
That's the basic procedure I use, but their are dozens of special
tricks and pitfalls to ivory work and every time I do the job, though
it is frequently, I think of some slight improvement. It is one of
the trickiest jobs in the business to get a perfect job and I just
wish I could have been around in the days when the ivory men were at
work to see exactly how they did it, though there were several
standard ways.
JD
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