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[Frank Weston]

Hi, Frank,

I get the idea that your Steinway "A" has its original finish. If so, I would
be very surprised if it were shellac/French polish. It should be varnish,
both from its age and from your description of the alligatoring. The varnish
loses its elasticity over time due to exposure to ultraviolet. It pretty much
has to come off. There are "amalgamators" on the market which have solvents
and a little finish in them, which purport to dissolve the old finish and
re-amalgamate it, but it's time consuming, and after a fairly short time the
amalgamated finishes often crack. With varnish, I think the best way is to
take it all off.  The advantage to the amalgamator, if you actually get most
of the old finish off, is that most of the patina (darkening through
oxidation) and stain remains, as well as much filler in the grains. It
usually doesn't look like the original finish, though.

The wood on your piano (I think it comes from Africa) is probably spectacular
(we have two A's from that period at home). We have done varnish finishes
with a shellac sealer coat (for historical reasons like museum work), and
they are lovely, especially on highly figured wood. They're not technically
more difficult than lacquer, but the sanding is more tedious, because both
the shellac and the varnish want to gum up the paper. If you do strip, and
you want to keep most of the original color, you'll want to use a
lacquer-rinsed stripper (dangerous, smelly) instead of the water-rinsed.
Those old Steinways bleed red dye like crazy when rinsed w/water. There are
other tricks, too, like sealing the stain in before filling the grain - it
makes them more vibrant and less muddy.

Varnish is a mixture of resin and solvent. When the solvent evaporates, the
resin doesn't just dry like shellac and older lacquers - it changes
molecularly to become more impervious to liquids than the other two. The
lacquer our shop uses contains some alkyd resin, which tends to make it
behave somewhat varnish-like, although the old finishes were really thick,
and we try to keep it fairly thin.

Good luck,
Bob Davis
Stockton, CA