[CAUT] Lacquering Steinway Hammers

[Jeff Tanner]

On Wednesday, November 10, 2004, at 10:47 AM, Russell Schmidt wrote:

>     My question now is how much I should dilute my lacquer (26% solid 
> by weight) to come up with this properly diluted solution that would 
> be equivalent of a 3:1 "Steinway lacquer solution". I came up with a 
> 7:1 solution as the answer but my results make me think this is too 
> weak.
> Or, would anyone know of a source for the lacquer used by Steinway or 
> similar product. According to the Stienway parts department, they do 
> not sell it.
>

Hi Russell,
I've had a similar experience with not finding the composition of the 
lacquers available at Lowe's and Home Depot.  Thank you for sharing the 
information on the Deft product.  That will help me tremendously in my 
next lacquering project. (yeah, I mixed this last one too strong)

At the convention in Nashville, Mr. Schandall spoke in depth on this 
subject, stressing that lacquer is extremely important to building 
resilience in Steinway hammers.  He did say that Steinway doesn't sell 
their hammer hardening lacquer, because apparently Steinway doesn't 
think it should be in the business of selling chemicals.  Neither did 
he reveal the manufacturer of the product Steinway uses.  I did wonder, 
then,  why they do sell the lacquers for the plate, case, etc...???? 
(available by the gallon, or can)

He said, though, that the products that are available through Mohawk 
and Sherwin Williams would probably be very close to what they were 
using.  But either way, the idea is to formulate a dilution, in terms 
of percentage of solids, similar to the solution they are using at 
Steinway.  I would also add that a year ago in Dallas, Ron Connor was 
talking in terms of perhaps 6:1 for the second application, though he 
cautioned that one should experiment until the lacquer is absorbed into 
the hammer in a certain way he described, which was a bit different 
from the way Eric Schandall spoke of a second application.

Jeff