A Short Lesson on Refinishing:
There are many options to choose from when refinishing a piano. The type of finish that requires the least amount of labor involves stripping the piano and applying several coats of an oil like boiled linseed or tongue oil. This type of finish can be very inexpensive but the oils do not protect the wood from moisture in any way. The makers of these oils would have you believe otherwise, but if you try laying a damp cloth on an oiled piece of wood over night you will find that the water has worked its way into the wood and discolored the area. Another simple method of refinishing involves applying a three coat finish. This usually involves one coat of a sealer and two top coats of lacquer. This type of finish does not attempt to fill the pores of the wood or to perfect the surface of the lacquer by rubbing. This system can cost as little as $1000. On the other end of the spectrum, you can choose to have the grain filled on the piano and every tiny imperfection repaired. This can also involve applying as much as 15 mils of finish (.015" - a great deal of material as finishes go) then rubbing the surface until every single imperfection is removed and the gloss brought up to the highest level possible. This type of finish can run as much as $1000 per foot in some shops. In other words, a 9' concert grand piano could cost $9000 to refinish using this method.
Let me explain some of my techniques and opinions in refinishing:
First I'd like to discuss stain. I truly think that the entire job of refinishing a piano is made or broken at the staining stage. I believe that the use of oil or wiping stains should be avoided in piano work, unless you are aiming for a specific effect that can only be obtained by their use. Many oil stains obscure the grain and ruin the beauty of the finished product. Stains that contain alcohol or water will penetrate the wood better and create a much more dramatic effect. Although I admit that I will use an oil stain upon request, I prefer to use the natural color of the piece the way I find it or to stain it with an aniline dye. The original manufacturers would have used an aniline dye in most cases. The result of these aniline dyes is a perfect clarity in the finish and a dramatic accenting of the grain. Why spoil it - use it. I often recommend my customers put no new stain whatsoever on there piece unless I need to adjust a color on an occasional board that doesn't match the rest of the piano perfectly. Also, new stain may need to be added in cases where the stripping process did, in fact, remove too much of the original color. If stain is required, then aniline dyes "should" be used exclusively. I own a piano here in the shop that had no stain at all right from the maker and was "colored" originally by the use of an orange shellac french polish. The results were spectacular and the quality of the coloring is in tact to this day. The only restriction that we have, when dealing with color, is the fact that these pianos have been colored before. Some woods have natural color in them and natural stain absorbing properties as well. It is not usually a good idea, for example, to take a piano that was original a brownish/green tint and make it a very red tint. The wood usually won't accept the change without sanding the veneer down past the original stain. This type of sanding is terribly dangerous and I will not do it to a piano unless the customer insists on a specific color that requires this or the veneer has suffered so much damage that such sanding is needed to achieve a good repair. In any event, this is a laborious and dangerous step which I avoid whenever possible. There is too great a danger of sanding down into the area of the veneer that the hide glue is penetrating from the back side or of sanding right through the veneer. So, within the limits of what your individual piano will accept, I'll work to match your color expectations exactly.
Another factor in refinishing pianos is damage repair. Every piano that is 80+ years old is going to have hundreds or even thousands of large to microscopic "boo boos" on every surface of the instrument. The tiniest of these is removed during the filling process (which I'll discuss in a moment) and by the rubbing out process. Other problems can be removed by steaming the bare wood to cause dents to plump back out to the proper place. Some small damages can be repaired by melting lacquer of an appropriate color into the damaged area (this is called "burning in" a repair.) Some problems need new veneer, new wood solids or various types of fillers. Any time a repair is made in which a filler or lacquer "burn in" is used a spot is produced that (regardless of how close the color matches) does not have an intricate pattern of grain marks all over it. Then the grain must be drawn ("faked") over the repair to make it completely invisible.
The next area of refinishing I'd like to address is filling. Piano finishes "should" be filled. This means that a material is packed into the pores of the wood in order to eliminate the surface texture produced by those pores. Of course, filling does entail an additional expense. If you don't care about the look of a grain filled finish and can't spare the expense of producing one on your piano, I am open to putting a very beautiful open grained finish on your piano. I have produced some pianos with open grained techniques that were truly breathtaking when done! Filling makes the surface much flatter for the beginning steps of refinishing and allows the refinisher to use much less lacquer on the surface if he wishes. Also, a filled surface is what the piano would have had originally so it is more "correct" to replace the worn out finish with a filled surface.
A few things to look for in a refinisher's filling job: What is he/she filling with. It is inappropriate to fill the grain with sanding sealers. As will be discussed in a moment, this material is too soft. Next, the filler must be able to take on the natural color of the wood's pores. Many very excellent manufacturers use a paste filler that is opaque and heavily colored to imitate the darkness of the pores. This is the material I, myself, favor. However, in using this material the finisher must take great pains to remove every trace of filler that isn't actually down inside a pore. Any residue on the surface of the wood will make a nasty mess. In fact, most fillers should be cleaned off the surface in this way. Some filler manufacturers claim that you can spread their filler onto the wood and leave the residue smeared all over the place and you will never see it. In general, this will not work since the fillers have some small amount of tint in them that will cant the color of the wood.
I think that any piano finish MUST be kept within the thickness limits that the manufacturer of the clear coat calls for. I like to spray 7 mils on most pianos. By the time I'm done rubbing them out, they are down to about 5 mils which is the maximum accepted thickness for the lacquer I used as stated by its manufacturer. Overly thick finishes will not expand and contract with the wood through the seasons and as a result they will soon check (crack) or come loose from the wood. Also, I feel that all the material that goes into the finish of a piano should be made of a hard and durable substance that is yet soft enough to flex with the change of the seasons. I currently favor the use of a nitrocellulose lacquer which is specially designed for use in finishing guitars and violins. It is hard and durable, yet very flexible. Placing a soft sealer under the hard top coats could cause the top coats to fail prematurely. It is like trying to "build your house upon the sand." Therefore, I don't use any sanding sealers under the lacquer. I only use an extremely thin layer of shellac to seal the wood. Shellac helps the first coats of lacquer to flow very smoothly by sealing away all traces of contaminants which could interfere with flow. Also, shellac lends a slight warmth to the color of the wood.
The down side to the thickness of finish I favor is that 5 mils of thickness is not enough thickness to remove every tiny imperfection that is in the wood. I can make the piano look exceedingly good with 5 mils. The pores will be filled and the surface will look like it was laminated in satin glass. However, thin edges and other small surfaces may have a little open grain showing or minor imperfections and other panels may have occasional small flaws caused by extremely deep damage that was repaired but was so deep it couldn't quite all be rubbed out. I've never had a customer, yet, who wasn't thrilled with the results. However, there are small imperfections which persist in the surface because the lacquer was too thin to rub them totally out. I do offer a more perfected finish. To accomplish this, it is necessary to sand the veneer back to "white wood." This removes all the imperfections that normally persist and enables me to create that perfect mirror finish that lacks any flaws. White wood sanding, however, is often coupled with reveneering sections of the piano. Those areas of the piano which were damaged badly enough will not have enough veneer on them to sand all the "boo boos" away. When this occurs, new veneer must be applied to the surface after all the damaged veneer is removed.
Many refinishers will use a very soft sealer on their finishes. The sealer is a chemical that is designed to flow well onto bare wood and form a substrate for the better top coats. It is also very soft to make sanding quite easy. The top coat is a material that is meant to rub out well and hold a beautiful, even and stable gloss. It should also be a VERY good vapor barrier and be very scratch resistant.
The reason for using a very soft sealer is that you can put on a great deal of it and then sand off all the little imperfections in the wood, including the texture caused by the pores of the wood, as well as little scratches and dents the wood has received over the years. Soft sealers sand VERY easily and are nice because they enable the refinisher to quickly sand out a very flawless looking finish. The problem with soft sealers is that they are not going to give you a durable finished product. Also they tend to crack or check very early in the life of the piano. A piano that has been well done with a soft sealer is going to look BEAUTIFUL when it's delivered. But in a very short time, the texture of the wood's pores is going to reappear in the surface and the finish is probably going to check. I prefer to use only the thinnest possible layer of sealer or no sealer at all and continue from there strictly with top coats. I also prefer to have my sealer made of a material that is similar in elasticity and hardness to the topcoats. Therefore, I usually use a very thin coat of shellac as a sealer. This is only applied in a "wash coat" to help the first coats of lacquer to flow well over the wood.
Many refinishers like to use topcoats that are designed to harden chemically rather than by drying. These finishes are referred to as catalyzed finishes. While catalyzed top coats have their place, it is NOT in piano work or any other instrument or piece of furniture that is meant to last for decades/centuries. Pianos are meant to be able to be restored and refinished over and over. A catalyzed material is VERY difficult to get back off. The last piano I restored that had been done once before with a catalyzed top coat was a Steinway L for the First Church of the Covenant in Erie, PA. It very nearly ruined the veneer of the piano getting this poorly done finish of catalyzed lacquer off the piano. The finished piece is now in service at the church to fabulous reviews! And the finish is spectacular; but it was a near thing getting that awful catalyzed material off. I have to admit that even I have tried using catalyzed top coats in piano work in the past. Each piece I did with that type of material checked within a brief number of years!
It is another fact of life in piano finishing that, because of expansion and contraction through the seasons, the texture of the pores of the wood will reassert itself in the surface of the finish eventually. The only finish material I have ever seen that can stop this from happening is polyester. I don't recommend polyester just the same. The reason for this is that polyester finishes are by nature VERY thick. They are difficult, if not impossible, to strip with the same implications listed above in discussing catalyzed finishes. In fact, once polyester has been applied to a piece of wood, you will never get it off. You must sand the polyester away and the wood with it. In addition, it is VERY expensive to repair when scratched or dented. Few refinishers are willing to work on polyester either. The reason is that it takes a great deal of work and special materials to do repairs. Also, polyester isn't flammable, it's EXPLOSIVE and, therefore, very dangerous to work with.
The last subject is the rubbing out of the finish. In order for a piano finish to be truly perfect, you can't leave the surface the way it is when your done spraying it. Although I have a spraying system that leaves a beautiful result right out of the spray gun (for those of you looking for an economical option) it still isn't good enough for the highest end finishes. Many refinishers will rub out their pieces by hand or with various types of sanders. For many years, this is all I had and the results were very nice. But now I have a specially designed pneumatic machine for doing this job.
To better explain the need for rubbing out, let me say this: When the finish material is applied, there are still high and low spots over the entire surface both from the wood itself and from an effect caused by the spray gun (called orange peel) as well as many small imperfections due to years of use. The result of these highs and lows is that the reflected surface of the piece is hazy and the actual surface is not perfectly flat to the touch or the eye. Rubbing flattens all of this out. Then you polish the piece to the required gloss after the rubbing is completed. The result of rubbing out is a reflecting surface that rivals a mirror in quality (always) and gloss (if desired). With lesser rubbing machines and techniques you are left with a flattened surface that still has "ripples" in the reflection or, worse yet, swirling sanding marks. With my machine (the same one used by the best companies - like Steinway) you are left with a much nicer product.
For a satin gloss, many refinishers will use a satin lacquer. Nothing could be worse! Satin and dull sheen lacquers and varnishes are not good as vapor barriers and are not as durable as gloss materials. When doing a less expensive finish that isn't to be rubbed out, I always build the body of the finish with gloss lacquer then add one or two additional coats of satin lacquer at the end that will set the gloss to the required level. This technique also comes in handy when setting the gloss on very complicated carvings such as found on the legs of some Victorian pianos. This enables me to set the right gloss across the leg without rubbing it out. It is impossible to rub out these very complicated carvings and get the gloss even. So they are smoothed to perfection by sanding and then the gloss is set with a coat or two of satin lacquer.
In the course of rubbing out a board that has been sprayed with lacquer, I start out with a 600 grit sand paper that is placed on the machine and used with a water/soap solution for lubrication. The water carries away the bits of chewed up lacquer so that it doesn't build up on the paper and clog it. Most of the finishes I do are not ones that the customer has ordered everything to be flawlessly perfect right down to the microscopic level. It becomes necessary to fool the eye into "thinking" that the surface is totally flat in some areas when, in fact, it really isn't. More about that in a moment. To make a truly flawless finish, the surfaces are sanded until they are completely dull. Once all of the shiny spots in the lacquer have gone, I know the surface is totally flat. Then the gloss can be set with other sanding grits, steel wool, various abrasive pads and/or compounds and buffers. In doing this flattening on a lower priced project, little bits of shine are usually left on very narrow surfaces and on edges and corners and other places that are hard to see because of the angle at which the light reaches them. These types of surfaces are often very hard to reach and require a great many additional hours of labor to get truly flat. Also, the thickness of finish that is usually ordered would not hold up to aggressive rubbing in these areas without sanding clear through the lacquer into the wood. In fact, in a full out refinish job, it is usual to spend three to four times as many hours working on these little hard to reach and hard to see places as one spends on the rest of the entire piano. By getting these secondary areas flat enough to be smooth to the touch, one can reach down to the lowest spots and degloss the areas that weren't reached during the rubbing process. If this is done properly, the eye will perceive that area as being perfectly flat. Only by getting very close with a bright light does one discover that the surface isn't quite as flat as the top of the lid was.
It is my opinion that the finish of a piano is best done in a way that is beautiful, appropriate, affordable and durable. I usually do a finish that is not terribly expensive but still truly gorgeous. The finished surface will be like a piece of satinized glass laminated on the surface of the wood! The secondary areas will look and feel great but you would be able to discover the way those surfaces were treated (as described above) if you looked closely enough with a bright enough light. For those of you looking for and able to pay for flawless perfection, the additional repair and rubbing time is available right here in my shop to produce that one of a kind look of 100% closed pore, unadulterated perfection on all surfaces. For the rest of you, the lesser finish is the one I recommend that you consider using. It will look as good or better than most pianos did when they left their factory. (Many manufacturers used and still use methods which leave a little surface imperfection behind.) Only the very high end brands and those using polyesters are producing the thicker finish look. In the end, how the piano is to look is totally up to you. I can meet your requirements for color, gloss, depth and surface perfection. Tell me what you want on your piano and what you can afford and I'll provide you with exactly that.
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