Ed Foote Wrote: "Maybe I missed something on the removal of grand felts from the damper heads, but why use such involved processes like strips of cloth? I just soak the felts themselves and let them sit for an hour, they usually just fall off." Thank you Ed for your thoughts. Several good points. I went through all this for those folks who do not want to number all the damper heads indelibly. If you have them on a rack board, you can soak them and pull one out at a time for rinsing. However, If the factory or you have metal-stamped them with numbers that will not wash off like pencil and some ink will, and you don't worry about the lacquered side, then you can just throw them all into a bucket of warm/hot water and then sort them out when dry. If you have the original lacquer on the heads then it will turn white and will not be usable when finished. A new lacquer finish will be required. The old ones were finished in shellac and it does not work well with water. I have done it several different ways and they all work some take longer than others. You will have to find your own method. On uprights when I am keeping the damper levers and want to unscrew them from the action and number them, then by all means, just stick the heads down into the hot water with levers and flanges sticking out. The rag technique is for leaving the action assembled. Ed Foote wrote: "Also, I haven't had any problems with attaching damper felt with hot hide glue while there is still a coat of old hide glue on the damper heads. The moisture and heat of the new glue certainly softens up the old, but it is well-attached itself. Anyway, I have many many sets of damper felts around town, and none of them are failing." I have worked extensively with player systems, pipe organs and reed organs. They all originally used hot hide glue extensively. I have had to re-restore many items that others have restored just a few years ago. I have found that other glues do not alway dry correctly when used over old glue. They will sometimes dry and then the chemical reaction sets in and the new glue becomes an emulsion and slides off with wear and time. I have noticed this to a lesser extent with new hot glue. Sometimes it just falls off. It does have a better track record gluing to its old self than with others gluing to old hot hide glue. D.L. Bullock St. Louis
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