I have gone up to as high as 1200 grit. Although I seem to recollect, that someone thought 800 grit was adequate. Have him try samples, and see what grit he prefers. And yes you can buff them back to the polished, being careful of the polishing speed, as some plastics mark. Mind you the marking may be due to the wrong buffing compound being used. With the buffing compound I believe it is better to load the wheel each time. John Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia ----- Original Message ----- From: Donald McKechnie To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2009 11:32 PM Subject: [CAUT] slippery keys All, About 6 months ago a customer of mine finally replaced his very badly deteriorated ivory key tops. He is a very good pianist and got used to the old ivory but it was time to replace. He could not afford replacing with ivory or bone so a good plastic replacement was the only option. Unfortunately he has not adapted to the new key tops. After playing on the old ivories for so many years (which had good grip at least) he feels that his fingers are slipping around the new plastic too much. The new plastic does not look like anything out of the ordinary to me so I'm ruling out any defect for the moment. He plays other pianos on a regular basis that have plastic keys but he feels these new key tops are more slippery than others. I suppose older plastic might have a bit more grip as they wear but I have never had a complaint about new key tops being too slippery. My first thought is to rub them out a bit with 400 grit sandpaper and see if that helps. I can always buff them on the wheel if that does not work. Anyone have an experience like this and any remedies? Thanks, Don Don McKechnie Piano Technician Ithaca College dmckech at ithaca.edu 607.274.3908 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091206/b7682477/attachment.htm>
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