Quick upright hammer hardening?

[AnPeter90]

I've heard tell in the past of using spray hair laquer to brighten hammers. It's not something I've ever tried though.

The school I'm at was given an upright piano by another school, but the head of music viewed it with disgust as it was so soft and mushy. It's just a forty year old Welmar, like all the other school pianos. No doubt a new set of hammers would work wonders, but that's not an option.

Today I filed and ironed the hammers, and also adjusted the negative lost motion. These steps have made a considerable improvement, and no doubt tuning will also help the perception of the voicing.

As it is, the piano would be quite a nice accompaniment piano, But for what the head of music wants to hear, it still needs a little extra brightness, a little more hardness.

What might you recommend to achieve this? Hairpray?

Best regards,

[Gill the Piano]

Alcohol is an old trick. Works on arteries too if you drink enough...

[Barrie Heaton]

We use to use 2 key tops and a quart of acetone, but these day we use hammer hardener from F&N.
If you can still get it, you can use model dope its very good and it get you high as a kite.

However,you don't put it on the nose of the hammer and you need to do both sides from 5 passed the hour to 20 passed

Barrie

[vernon]

hair spray, nail varnish or stewed old celluloid key tops are all the same stuff basically. They should make it nice and bright.. My uncle likened the result to a Steinway tin bath full of old nails. I'm sure he exaggerated. He really didn't like steinways.