Hi David, I would not take what fire restoration people say as the final word on many things. I have run into them in my work on some pianos that they said were way beyond repairing and they were pretty far off the mark. I have two pianos that are still going strong over thirty years after they were damaged by fire. One of them had the corner of the piano burning when the fire department arrived. You would never guess that anything happened to these pianos. I have found, also, in my work in the fire department that there are times when the restoration "experts" had written furniture and whole housed off that are still being used. I was asked to speak to a group of insurance people once about fire and water damage to pianos. I had found out by many of these people that it is easier to just sign things off than to repair different articles. I am no expert as far as fire restoration is concerned but I have found by experience in both the piano and fire service that many of these people ta ke for granted whatever is told to them when they take their training. I have run into some very knowledgeable people in the fire restoration business and some who have no clue as to the real world. Best to you. God bless Bill Balmer, RPT Ohio Northern University and the University of Findlay In a message dated 04/20/10 10:02:22 US Eastern Standard Time, davidlovepianos at comcast.net writes: The issue here is not so much the finish but what happened to the panel and the glue joints when the fire toasted the board down to some very low EMC and heated the rib/panel glue joints. While I am not an expert in this area, my recent conversations with fire restoration individuals suggest that once the flames actually touch the surface (especially the soundboard directly) the potential for failure increases exponentially and the piano is generally written off as a total loss unless complete remanufacturing is planned and justified by the piano's inherent value. While there may be some instances of "survival" the acoustical properties and longevity of the glue joints (this can be in the rim and support beams as well as the panel) come into question. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com In a message dated 04/17/10 14:21:15 US Eastern Standard Time, akwright at btopenworld.com writes: Our restoration shop just received a piano that's been subjected to a pretty bizarre accident (or perhaps vandalism - we don't know) at a school. We believe a fire burned in a rubbish bin directly underneath this Model A (number 400028). Below you can see the results; the soundboard got so hot that the varnish bubbled on the top side, yet the underside suffered no actual charring or burning (note in the second photo how the soot has been wiped away by my thumb in one spot). The last two photos reveal that enough soot was pouring up through the two holes in the underside (at the sustain pedal and the plate bolt) so as to leave a residue. It seems to me this would be a tricky thing to pull off even if one were deliberately trying to do it; specifically I mean getting the board heated just enough to bubble the varnish, but not so hot it that things caught fire and burned. A pretty flukey event! I suppose there must have been just enough stuff in the bin to burn for just long enough (and hot enough) to cause only this amount of damage. The soundboard seems fine, still has plenty of power etc. We'll be replacing it, since the instrument is covered by insurance and it seems the prudent thing to do. But I wonder if anyone with more knowledge than I about internal wood structure will have an opinion on whether any lasting damage to the board will in fact have occurred, and if so how it might affect the tone or longevity? Sincerely, Allen Wright London, UK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100420/81b9e5ef/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC