steinway verdegris is killing me

[Kent Swafford]

Benjamin Treuhaft wrote:

>     An 1890's Steinway upright action is sluggish due to verdegris.  I 
>flooded all the centers with Renewsit, the stuff Franz Mohr used for 
>years to free seized centers.  I massaged it in, sliding the center 
>pins back and forth.   That worked for a while.
>     It came back.
>     Next, I wet all the centers with alcohol and water and hit the 
>action with heat from a hair dryer.  That worked fine.
>     It came back.
>     Finally, I repinned dozens of centers, washing out the bushings 
>with Renewsit before and during reaming.  It worked great.
>     It's back again.  What shall I do?
>Ben Treuhaft
>Berkeley, Calif.
>ps   Next week I'm going to install a dampp-chaser and control unit.

The green stuff is enough of a problem that I know better than to suggest 
that there is a solution that works in all instances (other than parts 
replacement).  There are degrees of the problem, some pianos have it 
worse than others, and I also suspect that previous treatments by other 
techs in the past could affect the results of anything we do in the 
present.

My own M has a mild case of the green.  Years ago I treated the centers 
with silicone and naptha.  This action plays well, and I actually 
consider the green stuff a very positive factor in this piano because it 
seems to have kept the friction of the centers up to good levels, not 
allowing the centers to get loose.

I was once called to work on an M that was bound-up and unplayable. I 
applied Protek and although there was some improvement, many centers 
remained sluggish.  In desperation, I applied silicone and naptha to all 
the centers in addition to the Protek that I had just put on.  I was very 
worried that the combination of the two might have a bad effect due to 
some unknown unpredictable reaction between materials that are not 
normally mixed, but these action parts were worthless the way they were, 
so I took the risk.  The results were good and immediate.  The action 
freed up.  The next time I saw this piano it was still performing well, 
with only a couple sluggish centers.

I am not recommending this procedure, but simply reporting that it seemed 
to work for me in one specific case.

Kent Swafford