Zorba's "Secret" Piano Page
The Pie-Anna!
Ivory Bleaching
8 October 2006
Keys laid out for bleaching in the garage...
Covered with a single facial tissue...
Sprayed with H2O2...
Till all ivories are moist.
18 inch black light fixture purchased from local hardware store...
Is set in place.
As my H2O2 is NOT in a opaque container, I store it in this coffee can...
And cover it with a towel to keep out the light which would quickly transform it into plain H2O!
Hard to see in this picture, but the bottom key has not been bleached yet.
Much more dramatic in real life. One of the ivories came loose, I reglued it with white RTV.
Now debushed up to the ¾ point - a LOT of dust as accumlated on the keybed over the last year!
What's up with this piece of paper on the bottom of the keystick?Debushing proceeds apace, reaching the ¾ point (D-66). I've started bleaching the keys using the procedure found on
this page. If I were planning on doing this on a regular basis, I'd construct a chamber with a double tube black light fixture long enough to do all keys at once. Then I'd enclose everything with mirrors so the "waste" UV light I have with this setup would be reflected back to the keys. This said, this works well enough for a (hopefully) one time shot. I can do six keys in twenty four hours. Good enough.
Goddess only knows just where all the dust on the keybed came from over the last year. I had expected some in the front rail area as that section is exposed to everyday household dust, plus as I noted at the time (17 August), dust and dirt from the fallboard hinge replacement fell in here.
But, most of the dust is on the center and back rail areas, so this dust had to have come from inside the piano. I guess all the work done, tuning, removing/replacing the action, etc has stirred up more dust. Great - now I have to clean it up!
I'm holding off starting the actual RE-bushing as long as I have something else to do because I want to replace the capstan screws at the end of the keys and am having problems finding solid brass ones to replace the brass plated steel ones in place now. I don't really want to do this out of order at this point - but I will if I must!
I have NO idea what's up with the paper on the bottom of key 66 in the last picture. There is nothing apparent that is special about this key, so I don't know...
Lost?
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