[ John Phillips wrote in 080207 MMDigest:

> ... I have yet to dismantle the upper action.  There I will
> be faced with eighty-eight lower valve seats.  If they look
> to be in as good a shape as those in the pedal power governor,
> I will be very unwilling to dismantle them.

Why trust 90-year-old shellac?  Old shellac tends to crack and
leak unevenly.  How much longer will the old shellac hold up?
It's not going to get any better.  Shellac is cheap.

If you re-shellac all of the channels to the pneumatics, the valve
wells, and the pouch wells it will be far more likely to play evenly.
How will you know when it's done if there's leakage between the
wells, or the channels?  And if you think it's a lot of work to do
it now, think about having to tear the whole stack down next year
to do it again.

I just finished talking with a guy who didn't do the pouch wells on
a very expensive grand, and now it's either redo it or be content
with another Duo-Art that can't play softly.  It's always best to
do a top-notch job on the basics.

Bruce Grimes