burp... anon ----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry Fisher RPT" <larryf at pacifier.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 10:23:53 AM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Belching Ivories I've played with this a bit 15 years ago. I found some 30 percent hydrogen peroxide at a scientific supply house here in PDX. Store bought stuff is diluted with water. 3 percent and 6 percent are the most commonly available found in brown bottles usually. Hair dresser supply houses have 12 percent but, around here anyway, won't sell to you unless you have a hairdresser's license. I took a handful of ivories I had saved and dropped them in a small tub of this solution and let them soak for a week. All the previous glues fell off, some of them disintegrated, while others turned out pristine clean and ready to reuse. I laid them in the sun to dry and they curled up plus they turned whiter. Flipping them over curled them the other way until they were close to dry. I then put them in a press I made from two pieces of wood and taped them together to act as a clamp. They didn't dry as fast but they came out flat as can be. Now days, I go to a hardware store and get some wood bleach. One bottle is hydrogen peroxide and the other is sodium hydroxide or some such thing. WEAR GLOVES!! You can't feel this stuff on your fingers. Water leaves a cooling sensation on your skin, this stuff doesn't. It penetrates and starts talking to your nerve endings one at a time for hours. You can't wash off something that's inside your skin. OK so you have a bottle of wood bleach, get some cotton swabs and apply it like you're painting it on the ivories (still attached to the keys). Lay the keys out in the sun and aim them directly at the suns rays. You're looking for the UV component of sunlight and I learned that UV bounces off windows when it hits at an angle of some sort so 90 degrees to the sun's rays is best. I've had good results in a few hours during the summer months and longer in the winter. I re-apply the stuff every now and again as needed keeping the surface of the key moist with solution. I have yet to have one come off. I don't rinse, I just let them dry. I then buff and polish. As a result of my previous efforts I still have a box full of REEEEELLY clean used ivories. I'll be doing this again soon to replenish my supply, only this time just a few soaking hours will probably suffice. I'll have to do this when the sun is shining and as everyone knows, it's always raining up here in the upper left corner of the country. Additionally, if the sun does happen to shine, I'd rather be chasing pretty girls in kayaks. If ya really get creative and loaded with time to play, soak freshly cleaned and brightened ivory in vinegar for only a minute or two. They'll soften like cooked pasta. I'm working on playing with making roses using a scissors to cut them when they are soft. Another fun thing to do is to inlay them in Greenland style kayak paddles ....... adding to the draw on babes in kayaks. Someday, I'd like to put a band of ivory around my tuning lever to give it that custom look. You could make rings of this stuff to hang from your left nostril, or your neighbor's kid's nostrils. Better yet, roll scraps of this stuff into little balls, let dry and use as ammo with a sling shot to communicate with squirrels or the neighbor's cats. Ah yes, the things you think of when times are slow. Lar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100911/f8fdcd47/attachment.htm>
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