Rob, I've done it various ways: 1) Iron on wool setting, soaked strips of packing felt cut to fit heads/tails, felt knife to pry ivory loose with. Works pretty well on ivory glued with wafers, I've never done a set without at least some breakage, especially on tails. I shortened the felt knife blade to about an inch long. 2) Dry iron, felt knife- I ended up doing this on a 1970 Kawai with one piece tops. I'm not sure what the glue was but it was impervious to steam, tops were glued directly to whited keystick. I managed to save 49, two were already damaged, I broke one. Trying to save old ivory reminds me of a quote from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance- "Assembly of Japanese bicycle requires great peace of mind." Dale Probst Registered Piano Technician Ward & Probst, Inc. dale at wardprobst.com 940.691.3682 On Jan 7, 2012, at 2:05 PM, Rob & Helen Goodale wrote: > I'm wondering about methods to safely remove old ivories from junk pianos. I've got a junker that has ivories in reasonable condition and I'd like to try and remove them for future re-use. Every attempt I've made in the past has resulted in them breaking into pieces. I've heard of techniques ranging from using a steam iron to soaking the keys, even dampening them and placing them in a microwave. Is there a proven sure-fire way to remove them without breaking them? Even if one breaks the set will no longer match. > > Rob Goodale, RPT > Las Vegas, NV -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20120107/1ab73df4/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC