Embarrassing Moments - dirty story :)

[Doug Mahard]

Here is mine:

A school had moved a studio upright out into a hall so I could work on it
while the class room was being used for an after school activity.  The piano
was one of the dirtiest I had ever seen.  I decided to vac it.  I use a
Rainbow which uses water for its filter.  The motor seperates from the
bottom resevoir, you fill the resevoir up and reattach it to the top and
away you go.

There was a folding table in the hall which I put to use.  I pulled the
action and placed it on the table and vacuumed the action and the case.  I
normally don't blow out pianos but no one was around and this instrument was
still pretty dusty.  After blowing out the piano I placed the Rainbow on the
table in front of the action and removed the hose.
I let it run like that so it would help clean the air by pulling in the air
born dust into the water filter.

With the vac humming away I started to tighten wippen screws.  A student
came out of the adjacent room and looked at the vac which I couldn't see
because of my position and then she looked at me - kind of funny.  I said to
myself "what was that all about."  I peeked up over the action to take a
look at the vac and it was slinging mud all over the piano.  I had sucked up
so much dirt that the water level had come up and had no where to go except
out the exhaust vents.  What a mess.
It took me about 45 minutes  to clean it up.


Doug Mahard