Early Asian pianos

[jolly roger]

Hi Glenn,
               I have repaired a few of these road map cracks with thin Hot
Stuff,  It wicks down to the substrate and stabilizes the whole area.  Sand
down and polish it becomes almost invisible.  One advantage is that colour
match is not a problem. This will only work on the hair line cracks.
I have not seen this happen to Yamaha products either.
Regards Roger




At 10:24 AM 6/21/01 -0400, you wrote:
>>I knew this day would eventually come.  I have already replaced a few pin
>>blocks in 30 - 40 year old Asian wonders. Now I have a Grandma's early 70's
>>Schaeffer 5 1/2' grand in need of the usual pinblock replacement, (each
>>string tied off) and action reconditioning, (actually very little wear) but
>>the finish is the problem.  There is considerable damage due to wood
>>movement, including a crack in the veneer nearly all the way around the
frame
>>right about where the top of the inner rim.  I have dealt with this
before on
>>lesser name US pianos which had lacquer finishes and were easily repaired
and
>>hid.
>>
>>What do we do with these polyester finishes?  How easily do they strip?  
>>Anybody have experience with spraying polyester?  Would refinishing in
>>lacquer be a better choice?  If poly strips off easily enough I am inclined
>>to respray with my usual lacquer.
>
>snip
>
>What course of action you take will depend on the type of damage. Is 
>the crack just in the finish or is the underlying wood cracked as 
>well?
>
>My guess is that the crack is probably due to movement of the 
>underlying wood. If the crack was small you could probably get by 
>with cleaning out the crack, getting the edges smoothed out and 
>roughed up with 320 grit and laying in some polyester from Allied 
>International or Konig and doing the graded steps of sanding and 
>buffing.
>
>You still may want to take this approach, but a cheaper course may be 
>to repair the crack and respray the rim with lacquer, sand it out and 
>buff it. A laborious procedure but the resulting repair will be less 
>obvious. We did this on a polished Ivory piano (extremely hard to get 
>a perfect color match) recently with a major gouge in the side and 
>the repair was perfect. Of course realistically this should be done 
>outside of their home. If you've never done a major polyester repair 
>or refinished a piano in high gloss black, you may want to refer it 
>to someone else who has.
>
>BTW, I want to point out that referring to this as an "Asian piano" 
>lumps all pianos together that are made in Korea, Japan, China, etc. 
>It would be better to refer to it as a Korean piano, which a 
>Schaeffer Piano is. The underlying reason why the polyester cracked 
>is because they did not use a resin surfacer sheet on top of the 
>wood. Yamaha does and as a result this type of damage is almost 
>unheard of on a Yamaha. We have seen it on other pianos, including 
>Boston pianos which lack the resin surfacer sheet.
>
>-- 
>Glenn Grafton
>Grafton Piano & Organ Co.
>1081 County Line Rd.
>Souderton PA 18964
>http://www.graftonpiano.com/
>glenn@graftonpiano.com
>800-272-5980
>
>The box said "Requires Windows 95, or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
>