Old Style Leather Buttons

[Stéphane Collin]

Hi Paul.

 

I care for a 16 mm diameter and 1.3 mm deep flat hole in the lid.  I then
put, without glue, a 1 mm thick 4 mm diameter piece of felt, covered by
another piece of felt 1 mm thick and 9 mm diameter, again without glue.
Then I cover this with a piece of nice leather (more like chamois), also 1
mm  thick, that I hot hide glue only at the perimeter, where it will contact
the wood in the hole, leaving the underlayers of felt untouched by the glue.
You need quite dense glue for this, not too liquid.  It is important that
the leather end up a tiny bit under the lid surface : they will live longer
that way.

Old Bechsteins didn’t use leather for this, but a special sort of gummy
thing, like caoutchouc, aging quite badly as they end up always very brittle
and worn.  Not so with leather.  And this set up is very smooth and quiet.

 

Best regards.

 

Stéphane Collin.

 

List members:

A client wants the original leather buttons installed on his ebony grand.
They are glued into a specially shaped hole in the lid, etc.  Wasn’t there
an article in the PTJ about how to make/replace these bumpers.  Some of them
were lost in the veneer repair stages.  I usually fill the old holes and use
a stem bumper that’s available through supply houses.  But he wants to stay
as original as possible.  Right now, all I have is  modified spade bits for
the convex and concave profiles to form the holes.

Paul C

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