<html> Hi Diane,                You never know untill you actually completely strip them. Often the legs and lyres are maple or birch.  You will have two choices, tinting laquer to match, or re veneer.     Some of the ebonized stains are quite deep, and will restrict  you to a dark finish.  We just completed a Mahogany Heintzman that had previously been ebonized.  It turned out to be a marathon effort to get a nice finish.   Due to the spade legs, and the shape of the pedal lyre we opted for the tinting laquer approach.   Because of the depth of the black stain we were restricted to a darkish brown finish.  The first choice would have been to have some redish tone to the colour.  But not a chance on this one.   Explain the options, and the potential problems up front to the customer.   It should keep you out of trouble. We even tried bleach, and alcohol to get as much of the ebony out of the wood as possible.  It helped but the Mahogany wanted to keep the black stain. Regards Roger At 01:43 PM 7/6/01 -0700, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite cite>To those of you with knowledge about what's likely to be under all that ebonized finish--what are the chances that the M&H BB can be refinished in a wood tone?  I looked at it as well as I can and the only wood tone that shows anywhere on that piano are the soundboard, bridges, block, action parts and keybed.  Everything else is ebonized and the customer wants it to be mahogany. TIA Diane Diane Hofstetter 245-M Mount Hermon Rd.#343 Scotts Valley, CA 95066 ph 831-438-6222 fax 831-430-9741 dianepianotuner@hotmail.com <hr> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at <a href="http://explorer.msn.com">http://explorer.msn.com</a> </blockquote> </html>