•Dear Jody (and all the faithful subscribers), I recently quoted and was just made aware that I won a restoration bid on a 1962 Hardman Duo. It's got the plastic valve block assemblies and few adjustments for lost motion and is an altogether-poor excuse for a player action (compared to all the cleve...

•I can only comment as to what we have done since the 1950's in order to repair and glue ivories. First, we glue any ivories back on if they are loose. Sometimes we have to match them from our huge assortment of old ivories. We have recently tried white two-component epoxy for the white keytops. Thi...

•Gary Rasmussen wrote: > The keys...were GROSSLY yellow. I don't think I have seen many pianos > this bad. ... I tried everything to whiten them ..ended up sanding them > down, ... then buffed them out. Please permit me to contribute my own experience, as an employee of a pipe organ building firm wh...

•Hi everyone: This may seem like a silly question, but I am trying to mend some torn rolls and was wondering should the tape be placed on the back side of the roll paper or the top side. My opinion is the back side but haven't a clue which is right. If put on the top side there is always the possibi...

•Eugene Rogers wrote: > This may seem like a silly question, but I am trying to mend some > torn rolls and was wondering should the tape be placed on the back > side of the roll paper or the top side. Never use the back side. I did so decades ago when I first got into players but they are now unplay...

•In MMD970902 Eugene Rogers asks about repairing torn music rolls and wonders to which side of the paper one applies the tape. It has long been my practice to put the mending tape on the side of the paper _away_ from the tracker bar. The reason I do this is that I have observed a few major disasters...

•Larry Lobel was asking about repairing a loud buzz in the soundboard. The kind of buzzes caused by loose ribs are always the ones that seem tight. If they didn't, they wouldn't buzz, of course. Ribs that you can get a shim between aren't close enough to the soundboard to buzz at all. There are many...

•A remarkable item is already on the market. An acrylic polymer which can be tinted for colour match. I've made numerous invisible repairs on chips. The stuff is great for cracks too. This material is available for US $40 from Richard Wagner, email . Jon Page Harwich Port, Cape Cod, Mass. (jpage@cap...

•In a message dated 97-09-25 02:06:42 EDT, Bernt Damm writes: > you will need: ... Dentists infra-red light I believe that Bernt meant to write "Dentists' ultraviolet light". Most of the fast-setting tooth repair materials used by dentists cure with one or the other form of ultraviolet light. A (ver...

•To Terry Smythe: regarding the spring of any music box. Unless you fully understand the lethal potential of the springs in these mechanisms (even in a small-sized mechanism) and are equipped to do it, I suggest you send the spring out to be pulled and cleaned and checked for tears and re-greased an...

•Antique Phonograph Supply Company (APSCO, they now have a nice web page) will do spring lube and/or replacement. They have a lot of experience and use new stock if the old spring is broken. That being said, if you are adventurous, the safest way I have found to unload a spring is to get a big plast...

•Dear Terry, My suggestion on removing a disc music box spring is -- don't even think about it! I have the equipment to remove springs in cylinder boxes, and sometimes even then, a large, early spring can be a true "4-hand operation!" There has been mention on the Digest of someone who will replace ...

•Greetings from the carrousel restoration in Shelby, NC. Our recently acquired Artizan A-2 Band Organ has been entertaining (if extra loud) with the 16-gallon Shop-Vac replacing the vacuum bellows. Saturday I got some help removing the large General Electric motor (anyone know how to research old mo...

•Does anyone have a good method of removing cigarette burns from a wooden bench? The burn is about one inch long. The bench has a lacquer finish. One more quick thing: I would like to see everyone put their geographic location, i.e.: City, State, or City, Country, etc. Thanks. Scott Olson Missoula, ...

•A bit more on Roger Waring's query. Roger said the Steck in question had tubing that was 'original lead (80%) or red rubber (20%)'. Aeolian didn't use lead. The 80% is black rubber that has gone rock-hard. A complete retubing seems necessary. This will be an English Steck, not related to its Americ...

•You cannot get under the veneer and pop it back out like a dent in your automobile. In the piano trade we use a burn-in knife with a wet towel (a paper towel works). The hot knife steams the water in the paper towel and this steam swells the wood back up. If your finish is thick then this doesn't w...

•You might want to try using a small syringe and forcing a little water into the dimple, under the veneer then put a thick cloth over it and hold a iron there for a short time. Between the water swelling the wood and the hot iron expanding the water, this may pop it out, but watch the iron: too long...

•Our method to raise dents is to use a fine wire gauge drill bit to drill a series of small holes through the grain of the veneer, into the substrate. These small holes will allow steam to penetrate deeper into the dent and thus cause more than the surface veneer to expand. We also try to use some m...

•Hello all, I would like to pass on my recent experiences with brittle paper in old rolls. I have been repairing such rolls using a special "Archival" tape, Filmplast-P, as recommended by John Phillips and others (MMD) and found it to be ideally suited to the task with many advantages over "magic ta...

•First of all, thank you Darrell Clarke for bringing this topic back in front of everyone. I'm a crusader for using this tape to repair all paper rolls, old and new! I wrote to about 5 companies to buy this tape back in 1996, and the one company that sends me catalogs regularly and seems most to wan...