Previous post - The classic case for me was the customer witha set of twin 4 year old boys, who discovered what they were able to do when left unattended for 15 minutes by their babysitter who was texting her boyfriend and watching a movie in the adjacent room. After one key had been popped off, 51 more followed. When finished, the two boys craftily returned every keytop to the correct key, and neatly straightened them out, so that to the casual observer, nothing had been touched. The kicker was, when the mother discovered what had been done the next day when she sat down to play the piano, the boys claimed that the "babysitter must have done it!" These keys, by the way, had been replaced several years by another technician before I was hired as her tuner. I'm not sure what adhesive had been used, but it obviously didn't do the job. Anyway, I just would like to set the record straight as concerns the use of contact cement (for molded keytops with fronts). What I like about contact cement is that used correctly, there will never be this type of failure. >Chuck, I would have to strongly disagree with you. The "failure" of the key top cement that you talked about was no doubt Contact cement! < Joe - In the case of this particular set of keys, I'm pretty sure it wasn't contact cement or PCVE, but rather some type of ordinary woodworking glue - perhaps Elmer's. The undersides of the keytops were shiny, and the glue residue on the upper portions of the keysticks was slick and glossy - very little adhesion involved. Didn't have the look of contact cement, anyway. The "craftsman" involved left other tell-tale signs of inexperience on this job. The keys installed were molded keytops with fronts. The old fronts had been left in place with the new fronts covering them. (The keyslip was shimmed out with matchbook covers to compensate.) The sides of the tops were filed only far enough to avoid hitting their neighbors. The notches around the sharps were not particularly squared off, just filed to miss the sharps. A lovely job in all respects. The type of work that gives restoration work a black eye. I am interested in the specifics on the reformulation issue concerning the EPA. This is something I was not aware of. Chuck Behm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100103/f4da868e/attachment-0001.htm>
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