steinway keys

[John Delacour]

At 18:26 +0000 2/3/08, richard.ucci at att.net wrote:

>...Is it norman to have that 1-2 mm piece of wood at the front with 
>the ivory front glued to it? Couldn'tÊI just remove the whole piece 
>with the ivory still attached and glue on a new front?

The beech or maple backing veneer is normal, since otherwise the 
ivory would be glued directly to softwood end grain and would be very 
insecure.  If you hold the front against an iron until it's fairly 
hot, the veneer and ivory together can easily be separated from the 
key with a table knife or something similar.  You can replace the 
fronts with a full thickness plastic or celluloid using an epoxy 
glue, which doesn't care about end grain, so no backing veneer is 
required and you will get about the same overall thickness.

JD