LeatherKey Bushings

[Ric Brekne]

Hi Dale

We agree once more :)  I can echo your experience concerning older 
Bossies, and some Bluthners and scattered this and thats.  Leather seems 
to have gotten a largely undeserved bad rap. Perhaps this is due to the 
probability that appropriate lubrication for the application was either 
lacking or far too scantily applied back through time.  I aggree with 
David Stanwood that leather has a tendancy to get sluggish if not kept 
slick.  Teflon powder is my choice for sure. With felt I like to soak 
with Protek. Leather wears much better to be sure but then on the other 
hand if too eagerly sized it gets a bit noisy.  All in all tho.. in high 
use situations that allow for reasonably frequent service visits, I 
would choose a good leather hands down

Cheers
RicB


Davids & Terry
  my limited exposure to leather is that it holds up for a very long  time & 
seeing that many of our performance pianos turn a new set of nicely  fit 
bushings to a sloppy fit in about a years time leaves me frustrated. So  Trix & I 
are currently finding  leather supply & tehcs to work with  it to see if this 
will alleviate this problem. Imho It simply isn't  practical to replace a set 
of keybushings every year or so.
   I've seen many older Bosy's & Euro pianos with bushing at  least 100 years 
old that were fit right up to a new type tolerance of a few  thous. Really 
amazing. I remember that Joel & Pris Rapport used a lot of  leather bushings as 
well.
  Occasional lubrication would be easy & preferrable to many sets  of 
bushings & continual sloppy keys
   Dale

My  2cents...

Leather has a very high coefficient friction and leather  bushing are an 
absolute disaster unless are liberally treated with  microfine teflon 
powder.  Without dry lube the key plays a lot harder  with a sideways 
glancing stroke and the bushings wear out and start to get  noisy very 
quickly.... the same goes for cloth bushings but it is not as  critical as 
with leather...

You can test this easily by putting a  little side pressure on the front key 
pin as you move the key up and  down....  It takes a lot more force to move 
the key with a little  side pressure if the bushing has not been treated 
with dry  lube...

David Stanwood