Cleaning Piano Keys

If it's only a couple keys, a good piano tuner should have some replacements in his truck. However, unless he is older than Methuselah, he likely won't have real ivory ones. My parents salvaged a nice old upright piano years ago and a couple of the keys always bothered me because most of them were ivory, but a couple that had gotten damaged or missing over the years had plastic on them.

The good news is that they are as far as I know a dead standard size, so if it *is* only a couple of them, and they *are* plastic and not real ivory, and it's only a couple of them, next time you have the piano tuned ask the tuner to replace those caps for you and you will be good to go.

Now had I managed to draw on real ivory keys with anything more permanent than a No. 2 pencil... well... I got grounded enough as a kid, I didn't need a spanking as well.

good luck

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel
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Either will put you to sleep.

Reply to
JawBone

Permanent marker comes off of almost anything with "expo whiteboard cleaner" - and cleaning ivory keys (to get them "white" again) - my piano tuner said to use lemon juice when I rebuilt my old upright grand.

Reply to
clare

Gas. You need at least 3,000 PSI.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Earl Proulx (the Yankee home handyman) I think said yoghurt. American Yankee,eh?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

On Wed 07 Jul 2010 06:58:17p, told us...

u You might also try 20 volume hydrogen peroxide. It won't harm any material, ivory or plastic, and may very well remove the stain.

Reply to
Wayne Boatwright

On 7/7/2010 5:45 PM Freckles spake thus:

That would probably work as well as anything.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

Yes, ivory is porous. That is why you don't want to use ANY liquids or solvents in amounts that might soak through and disolve glues, or warp wood beneath the ivory. The ivory, if that is what it is, is not very thick. CAUTION

Reply to
salty

Unless of course the WD-40 cause discoloration that is worse and more permanent than the original problem. WD-40 is also not safe on all plastics regardless of what the literature says, and may soften them. The literature deliberately and carefully says harmless to MOST plastics. Some things will yellow real Ivory and some plastics badly.

I wouldn't even take advice from crayola on this problem. If it is a decent piano, the OP needs to call a piano technician with a a good resume and lots of testimonials.

Reply to
salty

Since you say so, I'm sure you do have ivory, but just to be sure, ivory keys are in two pieces**. If there is no line between two pieces, it's plastic. If there is a line, even with the end of the black key, it's ivory.

**Three pieces if you count the front vertical part, but I only say this to satisfy the nitpickers. :)

I woudn't assume invisible markers are also made of wax. Like almost every company, Crayola has expanded its product line.

And test whatever you are about to do on the front of a key at the end of the piano next to the wall. Or call someone with great references.

This was 45 years ago but it might still work. I'm sure Crayola or someone here has a way to get it off, but if you ever lose a whole piece, as the guys in my fraternity managed to do with several before I got there, I called the place that repaired pianos, and told them my problem (Of course being a poor college student working on someone else's piano might have helped but might not have been necessary.) And they gave me the phone number for their west side of Chicago plant where they did the serious overhauls, and I called up to see where they were and if I could come over, and I said one sentence and she said What's your address. I didnt' have time to give her a sob story and there was no charge.

And she mailed me a bag of ivories and a few black keys. 3 or 4 had cigarette burns but most did not. And they were slightly different colors of white. I think this was Lyon and Healy, even though I got their name from the other piano company in town. This was when ivory keys were still legal. I'm sure they saved all the ivory keys from pianos they scrapped. Now there won't be so many getting scrapped, but there might be as many that need repair, so you might be able to get only a few.

I'm not much of a pianist, but I think ivory's better. I have a baby grand Chickering Piano that my mother bought used in 1945. It has a beautiful tone (better than my uncle's Steinway, afaic) and ivory keys. The OP's not shopping but you others, don't get a Chickering made before 1900. They weren't good yet.

Back to the fraternity piano, and this truly is home repair, I think, I dusted the dampers and the dust kept coming off and off and off. I wet a rag and kept at it. After 10 or 20 minutes, I started seeing the wood grain. Eventually I got the whole thing clean and the grain continued from one damper to another. It was beautiful. They were all cut from one piece of wood. I don't know how old this piano was but the house was a fraternity house for maybe 50 or 60 years at the time, maybe less.

What's the name of the piano company hq'd in Chicago. Not Lyon and Healy. They had a showroom on State St. in the Loop on the east side of the street, and I took the elevator to the fourth floor marked Shop (or maybe I went to every floor until I found the shop), introduced myself to the first guy I met, and told him about the most serious problem I had, which was all I hoped to get fixed from them. He took me to a guy, who showed me what to do and gave me a few spare parts to do it with. Then he took me to the next guy, who told me how to replace a broken piano string (I had one) and told me to find out what size harp I had. (It's a letter from A to G maybe that sticks out big time at the narrow end of the harp) When I came back the second time, he looked up the harp size and key number in a chart and gave me more than enough piano wire to replace the string.

On the first trip, I also had a tightening pin that was loose and kept coming loose, and the second guy took me to a third guy who gave me a couple oversized pins and taught me how to put them in. You have to jamb a 4x4 or something under the sound board and between it and the frame of the piano, near the missing removed pin, so that when you hit the new pin, you don't break the sound board, which can't be repaired, so it's all over. I didn't have to hit the pin that hard, but the sound board is fairly fragile.

Also some of the keys didn't work and the fourth guy gave me a small roll of red felt (not a full roll) and some wood pieces that were in fact missing, and eventually I took the whole keyboard out of the piano to my bedroom, where I went over every key mechanism and glued about 10 or 20 of them together with Elmer's white glue and rubber bands.

When the fourth guy was done with me, he took me back to the boss, who gave me the name and address of the wholesale piano parts store in Chicago, and gave me his name and said I coudl use his name to get 50% off on everything. I only bought a tuning wrench. I can't tune but Joe Kowlkowski had a good ear and I got him to tune the piano.

The whole process took a month or two, and the two guys who could really play the piano were very happy when it worked. You should have heard Joe play "A Whiter Shade of Pale" on the piano. It sounded as good as a whole band. He did classical too. I was happy too, and played simple stuff.

Reply to
mm

So I dno't know how long the dampers took to get this dusty, but maybe

60 years.

I woudn't at all assume every piano has dampers like this. I've never noticed another one like it, though I don't usually lift the lid. I'm pretty sure mine are just black.

I guess I was pretty confident dirt was coming off and not just some sort of black stain. When I got down to the grain, it was still varnished or had some smooth finish on it. I used very little water and more rubbing.

Reply to
mm

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