>I know this won't be as much fun as all the bantering on the list lately, >but the last couple of soundboards I've repaired came out very inconsistent >in color. I usually use the Spurlock shimming system and put a light coat >of Deft to finish. I have tried oil stains, touchup pens, dyes, etc. The >last one had a couple of previous shims in it, so I had old soundboard color >(varied), old shim color, new shim color. Yikes! I tried a softwood >preparation by Minwax (for even stain absorption), then Minwax stains, but >__as soon as anything is put on the board, it gets dark__ and inconsistent. >Any suggestions? I don't have this problem with some boards. Thanks!! We've acheived excellent results with similar projects. Strip the entire board. Sand the entire board. Bleach the entire board using wood bleach. After dried out thoroughly sand the entire board again finishing up with 400 grit sandpaper. Rather than trying to darken the shim, you are lightening the rest of the board to match the shim. Benefits are that the board looks like new. We have been succesful going the other way on a replaced treble bridge on a Sohmer grand. The bass bridge was fine but the new treble bridge would not have matched the old bass bridge. Our finishing guy was able to stain with a very light tint to match the bass bridge identically. Bear in mind that these are 2 seperate disciplines with different skills involved. In our case, the piano tech. doing the bridge replacement and the soundboard shim work was not the same guy that did the finishing. BTW, we usually use a spray gun with lacquer for the soundboard finish. Glenn Grafton Grafton Piano & Organ Co. Souderton PA http://www.dprint.com/grafton/ gleng@fast.net 800-272-5980 The box said "Requires Windows 95, or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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