Coffee Serendipity

[wimblees at aol.com]

Any drink, whether it's coffee, Coke, iced tea, or even just water, ALWAYS sits on?a?table or on the floor. NEVER on the piano. 

Taking gummy residue off keys is best done with naphtha. Finger nail remover is lacquer thinner, and will dissolve plastic. I've never heard of Wiss. But I think a product called "gunk off" will do the trick, too. 


Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT
Piano Tuner/Technician
Mililani, Oahu, HI
808-349-2943
Author of: 
The Business of Piano Tuning
available from Potter Press
www.pianotuning.com


-----Original Message-----
From: David Boyce <David at piano.plus.com>
To: Pianotech List <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:15 am
Subject: Coffee Serendipity


So today for the second time in 23 years I spilled coffee in the customer's home.?
?
And in spectacular style. The cup was only a third full, sitting on a coaster on top of the piano (bad, I know) and I knocked it backwards against the wall. The remaining coffee in it spread over the wall in an apalling arc of unimaginable dimensions. To paraphrase Lady Macbeth's "Who'd have thought the old man had so much blood in him", "Who'd have thought the old cup had so much coffee in it". Paint with that coverage would be phenomenally economical! Three cups o' that coffee coulda done the whole house!?
?
But it worked out OK. The piano, a 1930s Kemble bought recently by my customer, had had large sticky labels stuck on the keys. The husband had managed to get the labels off, but all the "sticky" was left on the keys, quite disgusting and unplayable. My recently-discovered nail polish remover technique didn't work, as it tended just to dissolve the gunk into the key top. So I was thinking in terms of stuff for removing tarry deposits from car paintwork, which I'd have to go home to get. But then when I spilled the coffee, the lady brought in a bottle oif "Wizz Oxy-action fabric stain remover" to clean the wall with (which, happily, was painted with washable emulsion paint). I tried the Wiss on the sticky gunk and it worked.?
?
So all ended well, but I've larned my lesson. No more coffee on the piano, even if, as in this case, the owner puts it there.?
?
Best regards,?
?
David. ?

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