I recently acquired a player piano stack that, on first examination,
appeared to have been restored by a meticulous and skilled technician.
Unfortunately, disassembly revealed that the striker pneumatics had
been attached to the deck boards with thermoset (hot) glue.

There are several references in such sources as AMICA Technicalities
and MMD to removing strikers with a hot putty knife or with various
freezing methods. However, I could not find in the literature or recall
any discussion about removing the residual hot glue from the striker
pneumatics and the deck boards. I would like to rebuild this stack
using hide glue rather than thermoset glue.

My questions are simple:

1) Can the residual hot glue be successfully removed from the surfaces
of the striker pneumatics and deck boards, perhaps with the use of
a solvent?

2) Are these parts now useless for anything but kindling?

John Kelsey

 [ The term thermoset historically meant adhesives that cured or "set"
 [ on heating. The oldest type of this adhesive are the so-called PF,
 [ UF, and MF resins (phenol formaldehyde, urea formaldehyde, and
 [ melamine formaldehyde, respectively), which are commonly used to
 [ make plywood and are cured using heat and pressure.
 [ Source: https://www.adhesivesmag.com/articles/97337 -- Robbie