Wim, I think you have rather over-generalised. Nail polish remover may, or may not, CONTAIN acetone. It is not PURE acetone. David I agree. But in general, I would not advice using nail polish remover on keytops. Wim -----Original Message----- From: David Boyce <David at piano.plus.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 3:47 pm Subject: Re: [pianotech] cleaning key tops Good point Terry, I agree. I was pushed for time, and simply said "nail polish remover might be worth trying". I had in mind that a tech would proceed knowledgably and cautiously. I didn't intend any general recommendation to the OWNER. Wim, I think you have rather over-generalised. Nail polish remover may, or may not, CONTAIN acetone. It is not PURE acetone. Caution must always be advised, proceeding by trying on a small area, perhaps the bottom of a key front. There is surely a very large difference between immersing plastic keytops in ACETONE for 24 hours to dissolve them, and a brief wiping of a plastic surface with nail polish remover. Cautious experiement is always advised of course, and it's what in my hurry I hoped would be inferred from "might be worth TRYING". I have successfully removed sticky residue from plastic key tops with nail polish remover, without adversely affecting the surface of the key. And previoudly on this list I described the method I discovered from a customer, of whitening old celuloid key tops by skinning off a tiny layer of molecules of discoloured plastic with nail polish remover. I sent photos to the list. If we think about the marker pen marks on the keytops: The best hope is that the marker substance will sit on the surface of the key without interacting chemically with the keytop material. That is a best-case scenario, and doubtless a forlorn hope. It would certainly be easiest to remove, by scraping without damaging the key, or by a solvent ditto. The next level of problem would be, that the marker pen chemicals had penetrated microscopically into the surdface of the plastic, but again without checmically reacting with the plastic. In that instance, if one had the right solvent, the hope would be to use it to persuade the marker pen substances to come back out of the plastic, in a kind of dissolving-and-mopping process possibly innvolving capillary action. The third level of problem, perhaps the most likely, is where the marker pen chemicals react with the plastic and irrevocably bind to it chemically. In that scenario, the only hope is to remove the layers of molecules of plastic as deep as the pen has affected. This could be done 1) mechanically, by scraping/abrasion or 2) chemically by solvent used judiciously so as not to damage the plascti cosmetically, to an unaccepptable extent. This is all a long way of saying: nail polish remover might be worth trying, judiciously and with suitable caution. Best regards, David Boyce > Test an inconspicuous spot first. Be careful with any organic solvent > - it may dissolve the key! > > Terry Farrell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100405/ca4fa17d/attachment-0001.htm>
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