I just may have to leave this profession before too long.  With
everyone using Phenoseal on every board?  Silicone grease on every
leather or every board?  Bathtub caulk to glue on pneumatics?  RTV?
Poly this, poly that?

My purpose in this business has been to make things work for 30 to 50
years and then restore them to work for another 30 to 50 years.  If you
are using these new untested* products a general mindset has changed
drastically.  We are no longer restoring to give the instruments to
posterity.  We are restoring them for the next 30 years of posterity
if we're lucky; after that, forget it.  No one will want to restore
those poly-glopped player systems when the cloth and leather do fail.
I certainly do not want to.  I have enough work undoing the hack work
from people who used to use Elmer's on the glue joints in the 1960's
and 70's.

  * tested -- that means it has already been used for 30 to 50 years
and it was determined to still be good or last well.  It can be
removed upon the next restoration, and the units can be reused without
major remanufacture.

I know I am not speaking to all of you with what follows, but think
hard and know whether I am speaking to you or not.

Using all these new things is my worst nightmare.  After you "restore"
it with all those poly-glops, I have to go in and make it work a few
months later when the customer gives up on your ever getting it to work
right.  This is what I do all the time.  So far I have only had one
Ampico expression box that had been glopped up with silicone grease.
It was all through the wood.  Soaking it in degreaser did not do all
that much good, either -- a real nightmare.  I did one 88-noter that
had been phenosealed from stem to stern and it still leaked like a
sieve.  It works now like crazy after I chiseled off the poly-glop and
sealed it with shellac and replaced the leaky leather valve facings.

Do not depend on "poly-glop" to make you a good rebuilder.  Learn to do
it right with hot glue, shellac, burned shellac, and a drop of plastic
glue around a nipple every now and then.  If you can get the player to
work right that way, as we have done for the last 100 years, then your
piano will be playing for the next two hundred years with a restoration
every 40 years or so.  With the totally airtight bellows cloth I have
found and told about here before, _and_ the _totally airtight leather_
which I test before I purchase, I have no need to use those expensive
poly-glops to make my stacks seal.

It is sort of like playing a piano.  Once you hit a key at 20 pounds
per square inch pressure, if you hit it any harder you don't play any
louder.  You only shatter the action, break strings and damage your
finger joints irreparably.  Overkill is not needed anywhere.  Shellac
seals every micron of air out of the boards.  Any better sealer than
that is overkill and damages future restorations.

_Please_ do not use the poly-glops.  I don't want to deal with removing
them.  Learn to use original materials and restore players to be restored
again, and again, and again.  Most of my re-re-re-restorations were done
because someone did not master the art of restoration, or the cloth or
the leather failed, which I think I have solved by now.  If I find too
many poly-glopped stacks, I may just start building new ones.  Far
easier and not so frustrating.  Or perhaps open a plant shop.

D.L. Bullock
http://www.pianoworld.us/