Hi Geoff:
I would contact Ruth at Allied Piano. They can give you instructions on how to do these repairs. Their Konig products have a very long shelf life, but you have to mix the right color into the polyester. There's blue-black (Samick, Young Chang), brown-black (Bosendorfer), grey-black (Yamaha) and so on.
Very small nicks are hard to fix, but you can use CA glue (see GluBoost) sometimes. But you'll also need to have the right sanding and polishing materials to finish the repair, leveling it and polish it. Polyester is basically a resin, and unless the surface is horizontal, you'll need to create a dam to hold it in place while it hardens. With clear tape and mylar plastic, you can make dams to hold the resin. The irony is that the very smallest chips or divots are the hardest to fix. You need a larger area so that the polyester will stick, so you have to widen the area with a chisel, knife, or rotary tool. And that might make it look worse than if you simply ignore it.
As far as doing repairs on clear/wood color polyester, you'll only be able to work with the surface damage if it doesn't penetrate to the wood, and if there's impact, the polyester will shatter, and the only possibility is to use very thin CA glue to penetrate. Sort of like they do to fix a chip on your windshield. Most often this doesn't work well, but it's worth a try. If the polyester is chipped off of a wood color, getting the right match of color is almost impossible because the poly will affect the color, and some poly finishes over wood have tinted resin, so that adds another level of complexity. Sometimes it's better to just do a lacquer repair over a wood color polyester, knowing that the level of shine can't be achieved with lacquer that polyester can, and you may have to finish the whole area so there's no blending involved.
These are my experiences. If someone can do a 100% polyester repair of a chip down to the wood where the repair is invisible, or even 90%, I'd like to know how it was done.
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Paul McCloud, RPT
Accutone Piano Service
www.AccutonePianoService.compavadasa@gmail.com------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 09-29-2021 17:41
From: Geoff Sykes
Subject: Polyester repair
Occasionally we all come across a piano with a nick in the polyester finish. Sometimes we may have put it there ourselves. (But don't tell anyone, m'kay?) I would like to know if there is a tutorial somewhere where I can learn to repair, specifically, polished black polyester finish nicks. Since the great majority of pianos are polished black polyester I'm only interested in that color. I'm not interested in getting in to the refinishing business and building a huge color matching kit. I'm not interested in anything beyond patching up small-ish black polyester nicks. Anything beyond simple black polyester nicks would be a job for professionals. Any recommendations on where I might be able to find a tutorial on that particular repair?
Thanks --
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Geoff Sykes, RPT
Los Angeles CA
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