Pianotech

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

That's unfortunate. It's a unique product with unique properties in that it remains flexible when dry. You might try contacting Mohawk directly and ask them if they have "soft setting" lacquer resin without hardening agents. I think that's basically what it is. 

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

That's unfortunate. It's a unique product with unique properties in that it remains flexible when dry. You might try contacting Mohawk directly and ask them if they have "soft setting" lacquer resin without hardening agents. I think that's basically what it is. 

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

If your goal is more brilliance use a firmer hammer and voice down.  Chemicals damage the natural resiliency of hammer felt and produce bad tone.

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Parker does have a point. Some chemicals can rob the felt of natural resilience, as can excessive needling if you choose something that requires that treatment. Less is more with voicing IMO.  So you're always better off selecting a hammer that's as close to what you're after as possible. 

Tim:

 I'm curious, what type of piano, what type of hammer?

If your goal is more brilliance use a firmer hammer and voice down.  Chemicals damage the natural resiliency of hammer felt and produce bad tone.

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

It's a 1911 Schomacker 5'1" grand. Ronsen bacon hammers. 

Thanks, everyone, for the input!

Parker does have a point. Some chemicals can rob the felt of natural resilience, as can excessive needling if you choose something that requires that treatment. Less is more with voicing IMO.  So you're always better off selecting a hammer that's as close to what you're after as possible. 

Tim:

 I'm curious, what type of piano, what type of hammer?

If your goal is more brilliance use a firmer hammer and voice down.  Chemicals damage the natural resiliency of hammer felt and produce bad tone.

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Hi Tim,

I am also, as you are, trying different juicing liquids, searching for the right one(s) for my voicing needs. Please let us know what you decided to use and what kind of results resulted.

Thanks!

It's a 1911 Schomacker 5'1" grand. Ronsen bacon hammers. 

Thanks, everyone, for the input!

Parker does have a point. Some chemicals can rob the felt of natural resilience, as can excessive needling if you choose something that requires that treatment. Less is more with voicing IMO.  So you're always better off selecting a hammer that's as close to what you're after as possible. 

Tim:

 I'm curious, what type of piano, what type of hammer?

If your goal is more brilliance use a firmer hammer and voice down.  Chemicals damage the natural resiliency of hammer felt and produce bad tone.

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I really think the best thing to do is to prep some samples with various products and see how it sounds to you.  While extrapolating the entire piano is difficult, by putting sample hammers with different treatments in the mid range (note #40), and mid lower treble (note #60) it will tell you quite a bit.

So, I would take some sample hammers, in this case Ronsen Bacon Felt.  There are usually adequate extras or you can take them from different sets just be sure that the profiles are equal.  I usually buy multiple sets at a time for stock so I usually have plenty of extras.  Prep the hammers with different solutions and see what you think.  While you're at it compare those with a Renner Blue Point and/or an Abel Natural, or whatever your hammers of choice are.  Also, keep those samples around so you can test and demo what new hammers will do for your customer's piano.  It's very telling, not only for you but for them, to see what the potential in a piano is that has a set of worn out or poorly chosen hammers.  

We are all describing our preferences but you can't really know anything until you hear it for yourself.  

Hi Tim,

I am also, as you are, trying different juicing liquids, searching for the right one(s) for my voicing needs. Please let us know what you decided to use and what kind of results resulted.

Thanks!

It's a 1911 Schomacker 5'1" grand. Ronsen bacon hammers. 

Thanks, everyone, for the input!

Parker does have a point. Some chemicals can rob the felt of natural resilience, as can excessive needling if you choose something that requires that treatment. Less is more with voicing IMO.  So you're always better off selecting a hammer that's as close to what you're after as possible. 

Tim:

 I'm curious, what type of piano, what type of hammer?

If your goal is more brilliance use a firmer hammer and voice down.  Chemicals damage the natural resiliency of hammer felt and produce bad tone.

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Chris C wrote: "BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed".

Clearly Chris is quoting me.  I'm not sure what he means by snippety exactly, it doesn't make sense in that context.  I think maybe the word he was looking for was "flippant".  But these kinds of comments are unnecessary and unproductive.  Some people seem unable to learn.  

There's nothing "snippety" about it.  Choosing the right hammer, when you have the opportunity, should take into consideration the treatment that the hammer will need and the extent of that treatment.  If you choose to put an inappropriate hammer on a piano "a puffball" for example, on a piano that needs power and focus, then you will be jumping through hoops to get what you expect out of it.  The contrary is also true, if you put a hammer that is excessively hard and/or heavy, then you may end up having to resort to extreme needling to get it more compliant for the piano you put it on.  You would have been better off choosing a different hammer, one closer to your goal that requires only modest tonal shaping.  Manufacturers do make choices about the hammers they use and they are not all the same, as we know.  Obviously, if you are handed an action already set up and need to decide best practices on an existing set, you don't have that luxury.  But that's not what's being discussed here.

I would encourage Chris to take my class "If I had a hammer" which discusses this very topic.  Might learn something--hope springs eternal.  

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

David,

I took your class about hammer selection in Reno, it was excellent. 

While I agree with you that choosing the correct hammer is incredibly important, to my knowledge, different hammers are designed to be treated differently in terms of what we should expect invoicing. For example, a Steinway hammer comes pre-lacquered. It was obviously designed to be too soft before adding the lacquer because the lacquer gives it the "Steinway tone." I bought Ronsen Bacon knowing that I would very likely need to "voice up" a little. On the other side of the coin, I voiced nearly new Abel Natural felt on a brand new 7+ ft. Estonia a few weeks back. The previous techs only did "chopstick" needling. While all dynamic ranges were good and controllable, the owner complained of a metallic tone at each dynamic level. I used the needle voicing procedure from your class and it improved the tone drastically- brought a smile to my face. I just received a text this morning from the owner about how much he loves the sound of his piano now (he was thinking that he might need new hammers or even get rid of the piano prior to this voicing appointment). All of this to say that it seems that while the ideal might not be too much intervention, hammer manufacturers design their product so the best qualities get brought out with a certain amount of preparation/ intervention.

I understand that there is some history between you and Chris. I get it. While you both take very different approaches, I must say that I have learned a good deal from both of you. I think that you are both innovative, curious and have dedicated tremendous amounts of time and effort to your art with incredible results. Both of you have helped me formulate a path forward in my own work, and I continue to look forward to what I can learn from you both in the future.

Chris C wrote: "BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed".

Clearly Chris is quoting me.  I'm not sure what he means by snippety exactly, it doesn't make sense in that context.  I think maybe the word he was looking for was "flippant".  But these kinds of comments are unnecessary and unproductive.  Some people seem unable to learn.  

There's nothing "snippety" about it.  Choosing the right hammer, when you have the opportunity, should take into consideration the treatment that the hammer will need and the extent of that treatment.  If you choose to put an inappropriate hammer on a piano "a puffball" for example, on a piano that needs power and focus, then you will be jumping through hoops to get what you expect out of it.  The contrary is also true, if you put a hammer that is excessively hard and/or heavy, then you may end up having to resort to extreme needling to get it more compliant for the piano you put it on.  You would have been better off choosing a different hammer, one closer to your goal that requires only modest tonal shaping.  Manufacturers do make choices about the hammers they use and they are not all the same, as we know.  Obviously, if you are handed an action already set up and need to decide best practices on an existing set, you don't have that luxury.  But that's not what's being discussed here.

I would encourage Chris to take my class "If I had a hammer" which discusses this very topic.  Might learn something--hope springs eternal.  

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Chris C wrote: "BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed".

Clearly Chris is quoting me.  I'm not sure what he means by snippety exactly, it doesn't make sense in that context.  I think maybe the word he was looking for was "flippant".  But these kinds of comments are unnecessary and unproductive.  Some people seem unable to learn.  

There's nothing "snippety" about it.  Choosing the right hammer, when you have the opportunity, should take into consideration the treatment that the hammer will need and the extent of that treatment.  If you choose to put an inappropriate hammer on a piano "a puffball" for example, on a piano that needs power and focus, then you will be jumping through hoops to get what you expect out of it.  The contrary is also true, if you put a hammer that is excessively hard and/or heavy, then you may end up having to resort to extreme needling to get it more compliant for the piano you put it on.  You would have been better off choosing a different hammer, one closer to your goal that requires only modest tonal shaping.  Manufacturers do make choices about the hammers they use and they are not all the same, as we know.  Obviously, if you are handed an action already set up and need to decide best practices on an existing set, you don't have that luxury.  But that's not what's being discussed here.

I would encourage Chris to take my class "If I had a hammer" which discusses this very topic.  Might learn something--hope springs eternal.  

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-28-2025 10:08
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2025 21:07
From: Tim Foster
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

------------------------------
Tim Foster RPT
New Oxford PA
(470) 231-6074
------------------------------

Poster Love,

Incorrect, i wasn't quoting you at all.

I was generalizing, as hammer choice and their condition is mentioned a lot in many threads. My point is you have to work with what's in front of you. For instance. on Saturday, i have to try and repair a set of Ronsen Wurzen felt hammers on a clients piano that had been excessively voiced with B-72 by someone else. Not my ideal hammer voicing situation.

And for me taking one of your classes would be a total waste of time. I don't go backwards, sorry. And that also is not an insult. I was an apprentice once myself, and basically had to UNLEARN piano repair stuff (from being poorly trained) as i became self- employed.

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-28-2025 11:02
From: David Love
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Chris C wrote: "BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed".

Clearly Chris is quoting me.  I'm not sure what he means by snippety exactly, it doesn't make sense in that context.  I think maybe the word he was looking for was "flippant".  But these kinds of comments are unnecessary and unproductive.  Some people seem unable to learn.  

There's nothing "snippety" about it.  Choosing the right hammer, when you have the opportunity, should take into consideration the treatment that the hammer will need and the extent of that treatment.  If you choose to put an inappropriate hammer on a piano "a puffball" for example, on a piano that needs power and focus, then you will be jumping through hoops to get what you expect out of it.  The contrary is also true, if you put a hammer that is excessively hard and/or heavy, then you may end up having to resort to extreme needling to get it more compliant for the piano you put it on.  You would have been better off choosing a different hammer, one closer to your goal that requires only modest tonal shaping.  Manufacturers do make choices about the hammers they use and they are not all the same, as we know.  Obviously, if you are handed an action already set up and need to decide best practices on an existing set, you don't have that luxury.  But that's not what's being discussed here.

I would encourage Chris to take my class "If I had a hammer" which discusses this very topic.  Might learn something--hope springs eternal.  

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-28-2025 10:08
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2025 21:07
From: Tim Foster
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

------------------------------
Tim Foster RPT
New Oxford PA
(470) 231-6074
------------------------------

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Hi Chris, Thanks for the details of your voicing approach using Sandarac and shellac. What type of shellac do you use and which supply house do you order that and the shellac from? I look forward to experimenting with these solutions. Also, thanks for the comments about water in alcohol. I just bought some Everyclear and did not realize that it had 5% water in it.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Anyone using Everclear should also be aware that it comes in a couple of strengths. While 95% is available in some locations, 75.5% is only available in others - that's all I seem to find in the stores here.

Ron Koval

Hi Chris, Thanks for the details of your voicing approach using Sandarac and shellac. What type of shellac do you use and which supply house do you order that and the shellac from? I look forward to experimenting with these solutions. Also, thanks for the comments about water in alcohol. I just bought some Everyclear and did not realize that it had 5% water in it.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I was able to order and receive the high-potency version of grain alcohol from Amazon, even though that is not sold in stores in California.

Anyone using Everclear should also be aware that it comes in a couple of strengths. While 95% is available in some locations, 75.5% is only available in others - that's all I seem to find in the stores here.

Ron Koval

Hi Chris, Thanks for the details of your voicing approach using Sandarac and shellac. What type of shellac do you use and which supply house do you order that and the shellac from? I look forward to experimenting with these solutions. Also, thanks for the comments about water in alcohol. I just bought some Everyclear and did not realize that it had 5% water in it.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I don't think that's a problem Richard. I was responding to the statement that you don't want any water in the solutions that you're dissolving shellac with. I was just pointing out that there is a little bit of water in those solutions anyway and it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on the use of shellac. It was more a point of clarification than condemnation. Products like Everclear are stable at 95% if stored properly and there's a reason that 95% figure exists in this case.  It kind of reminds me of certified organic products. Things don't have to be 100% free of substances that might render them as technically not organic. But the certification and labeling process offers some leeway. 

Chris and others prefer shellac and that's fine.  It has its own properties.  I think what this thread shows is that people have different ways and preferences for hardening hammers.  I was just making a point of clarification about "pure" so called 100% ethanol. It ain't. But it's close. 

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I won't mention any names, but someone likes to read between the lines of my text and comment on what i didn't write. Hilarious.

So, i did a deep dive on alcohol drawing moisture out of the air this morning. I watched the test that proves that alcohol is not hygroscopic. Alcohol absorbs water when it comes into contact with water, which is why its used to remove water from gasoline. The water gets into the gas because of condensation.

Poster Love, if you want to state that there is false labeling going on so you can come out right on the issue when your wrong that's on you. So most if not all those facts you copy and pasted from google are incorrect. Especially after its seen with thine own eyes.

Regardless, i use Lab grade 99.9% alcohol. Its real, its not false advertising. Unless you think the Labs are fake too.  What must have gone over a few heads is what i said ealier "you can see the faster absorption with the 99.9%". Now it makes more sense.

I don't think that's a problem Richard. I was responding to the statement that you don't want any water in the solutions that you're dissolving shellac with. I was just pointing out that there is a little bit of water in those solutions anyway and it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on the use of shellac. It was more a point of clarification than condemnation. Products like Everclear are stable at 95% if stored properly and there's a reason that 95% figure exists in this case.  It kind of reminds me of certified organic products. Things don't have to be 100% free of substances that might render them as technically not organic. But the certification and labeling process offers some leeway. 

Chris and others prefer shellac and that's fine.  It has its own properties.  I think what this thread shows is that people have different ways and preferences for hardening hammers.  I was just making a point of clarification about "pure" so called 100% ethanol. It ain't. But it's close. 

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

To those using B-72 go back and check your work. Stick a single needle in the hammers and check for gummed up hammers. It horrible stuff!! I did just that today. I was told it had only one application of B-72 and they felt like gummy rocks with no give. It perfectly explained the tone when first heard the piano. Bright, tinny and thin. The hammers did not have any give on the squeeze test. I ended up needling the shoulders from 9-3  with a 4 needle tool about 30 strikes per side just to get back rubber ball feel. So I must have Made the Piano Great Again, because the piano owner couldn't stop playing.

Say no to that B-72 urge. I'm dumping all of mine out.

-chris

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-30-2025 14:21
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

I won't mention any names, but someone likes to read between the lines of my text and comment on what i didn't write. Hilarious.

So, i did a deep dive on alcohol drawing moisture out of the air this morning. I watched the test that proves that alcohol is not hygroscopic. Alcohol absorbs water when it comes into contact with water, which is why its used to remove water from gasoline. The water gets into the gas because of condensation.

Poster Love, if you want to state that there is false labeling going on so you can come out right on the issue when your wrong that's on you. So most if not all those facts you copy and pasted from google are incorrect. Especially after its seen with thine own eyes.

Regardless, i use Lab grade 99.9% alcohol. Its real, its not false advertising. Unless you think the Labs are fake too.  What must have gone over a few heads is what i said ealier "you can see the faster absorption with the 99.9%". Now it makes more sense.

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-30-2025 12:04
From: David Love
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

I don't think that's a problem Richard. I was responding to the statement that you don't want any water in the solutions that you're dissolving shellac with. I was just pointing out that there is a little bit of water in those solutions anyway and it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on the use of shellac. It was more a point of clarification than condemnation. Products like Everclear are stable at 95% if stored properly and there's a reason that 95% figure exists in this case.  It kind of reminds me of certified organic products. Things don't have to be 100% free of substances that might render them as technically not organic. But the certification and labeling process offers some leeway. 

Chris and others prefer shellac and that's fine.  It has its own properties.  I think what this thread shows is that people have different ways and preferences for hardening hammers.  I was just making a point of clarification about "pure" so called 100% ethanol. It ain't. But it's close. 

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-30-2025 11:47
From: Richard West
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Original Message:
Sent: 8/30/2025 11:27:00 AM
From: David Love
Subject: RE: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-29-2025 13:56
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-29-2025 12:32
From: David Love
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-29-2025 08:25
From: Thomas Servinsky
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Original Message:
Sent: 8/29/2025 1:05:00 AM
From: Peter Acronico
Subject: RE: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Original Message:
Sent: 8/28/2025 10:08:00 AM
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: RE: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2025 21:07
From: Tim Foster
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

------------------------------
Tim Foster RPT
New Oxford PA
(470) 231-6074
------------------------------

I won't mention any names, but someone likes to read between the lines of my text and comment on what i didn't write. Hilarious.

So, i did a deep dive on alcohol drawing moisture out of the air this morning. I watched the test that proves that alcohol is not hygroscopic. Alcohol absorbs water when it comes into contact with water, which is why its used to remove water from gasoline. The water gets into the gas because of condensation.

Poster Love, if you want to state that there is false labeling going on so you can come out right on the issue when your wrong that's on you. So most if not all those facts you copy and pasted from google are incorrect. Especially after its seen with thine own eyes.

Regardless, i use Lab grade 99.9% alcohol. Its real, its not false advertising. Unless you think the Labs are fake too.  What must have gone over a few heads is what i said ealier "you can see the faster absorption with the 99.9%". Now it makes more sense.

I don't think that's a problem Richard. I was responding to the statement that you don't want any water in the solutions that you're dissolving shellac with. I was just pointing out that there is a little bit of water in those solutions anyway and it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on the use of shellac. It was more a point of clarification than condemnation. Products like Everclear are stable at 95% if stored properly and there's a reason that 95% figure exists in this case.  It kind of reminds me of certified organic products. Things don't have to be 100% free of substances that might render them as technically not organic. But the certification and labeling process offers some leeway. 

Chris and others prefer shellac and that's fine.  It has its own properties.  I think what this thread shows is that people have different ways and preferences for hardening hammers.  I was just making a point of clarification about "pure" so called 100% ethanol. It ain't. But it's close. 

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

There are simple, chemical way to dehydrate an alcohol & water mixture:

• Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4): Highly effective at binding with water molecules.
• Sodium Sulfate (Na2SO4): Another common drying agent that can be used in similar applications.
• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2): Effective but can be more aggressive in terms of reactivity.

By running a 95% alcohol solution over a drying agent you can easily get to 99% purity.  I suspect that most denatured or industrial alcohol has been dehydrated like this.

I have found that by first adding a small amount of acetone to my B-72 I get better and faster dissolving solution.

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Yes, you can do that.  It involves mixing these compounds with the alcohol/water mixture, allowing them to absorb the water and then filtering that through something like a coffee strainer.  People aren't going to do that.  And there are cautions like eye, skin and lung irritation.  There is also the corrosive nature of these compounds should the come in contact with metals, exothermic reactions (these can create heat when mixed with water), and in some cases they will produce hazardous biproducts like hydrogen gas or flammable alcohol vapors.  Then there's the question of how much is required to effectively remove the water.  But more to the point, it's not necessary.  Ninety five percent alcohol (or should I say 5% water) will have no negative effects on the hammer.  I would guess that most people using shellac flakes are using a 95% solution and, so far, I don't see any reports of problems with those who prefer this for hammer voicing.    

There are simple, chemical way to dehydrate an alcohol & water mixture:

• Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4): Highly effective at binding with water molecules.
• Sodium Sulfate (Na2SO4): Another common drying agent that can be used in similar applications.
• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2): Effective but can be more aggressive in terms of reactivity.

By running a 95% alcohol solution over a drying agent you can easily get to 99% purity.  I suspect that most denatured or industrial alcohol has been dehydrated like this.

I have found that by first adding a small amount of acetone to my B-72 I get better and faster dissolving solution.

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Yes, you can do that.  It involves mixing these compounds with the alcohol/water mixture, allowing them to absorb the water and then filtering that through something like a coffee strainer.  People aren't going to do that.  And there are cautions like eye, skin and lung irritation.  There is also the corrosive nature of these compounds should the come in contact with metals, exothermic reactions (these can create heat when mixed with water), and in some cases they will produce hazardous biproducts like hydrogen gas or flammable alcohol vapors.  Then there's the question of how much is required to effectively remove the water.  But more to the point, it's not necessary.  Ninety five percent alcohol (or should I say 5% water) will have no negative effects on the hammer.  I would guess that most people using shellac flakes are using a 95% solution and, so far, I don't see any reports of problems with those who prefer this for hammer voicing.    

There are simple, chemical way to dehydrate an alcohol & water mixture:

• Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4): Highly effective at binding with water molecules.
• Sodium Sulfate (Na2SO4): Another common drying agent that can be used in similar applications.
• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2): Effective but can be more aggressive in terms of reactivity.

By running a 95% alcohol solution over a drying agent you can easily get to 99% purity.  I suspect that most denatured or industrial alcohol has been dehydrated like this.

I have found that by first adding a small amount of acetone to my B-72 I get better and faster dissolving solution.

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I am not suggesting that you/we try to dehydrate our alcohol, it is probably already done industrially and denatured alcohol is probably well dehydrated, otherwise it might not work as well as burner fuel or to mix with other chemicals.

Personally I would prefer to work with 100% ethanol, but our wise and all knowing Federal Government wants their taxes paid and prefers that all ethanol is dangerously toxic.  I don't know what would be wrong with 95% ethanol and 5% isopropyl.  I use a lot of isopropyl myself.

------------------------------
Blaine Hebert RPT
Duarte CA
(626) 390-0512

Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2025 13:02
From: David Love
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Yes, you can do that.  It involves mixing these compounds with the alcohol/water mixture, allowing them to absorb the water and then filtering that through something like a coffee strainer.  People aren't going to do that.  And there are cautions like eye, skin and lung irritation.  There is also the corrosive nature of these compounds should the come in contact with metals, exothermic reactions (these can create heat when mixed with water), and in some cases they will produce hazardous biproducts like hydrogen gas or flammable alcohol vapors.  Then there's the question of how much is required to effectively remove the water.  But more to the point, it's not necessary.  Ninety five percent alcohol (or should I say 5% water) will have no negative effects on the hammer.  I would guess that most people using shellac flakes are using a 95% solution and, so far, I don't see any reports of problems with those who prefer this for hammer voicing.    

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2025 03:41
From: Blaine Hebert
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

There are simple, chemical way to dehydrate an alcohol & water mixture:

• Magnesium Sulfate (MgSO4): Highly effective at binding with water molecules.
• Sodium Sulfate (Na2SO4): Another common drying agent that can be used in similar applications.
• Calcium Chloride (CaCl2): Effective but can be more aggressive in terms of reactivity.

By running a 95% alcohol solution over a drying agent you can easily get to 99% purity.  I suspect that most denatured or industrial alcohol has been dehydrated like this.

I have found that by first adding a small amount of acetone to my B-72 I get better and faster dissolving solution.

------------------------------
Blaine Hebert RPT
Duarte CA
(626) 390-0512

Original Message:
Sent: 08-30-2025 11:26
From: David Love
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Oh Chris, so desperate to express your contempt.  Yes, they are all highly flammable.  It was simply a warning in case folks were unaware. We don't usually worry about the flammability of bathroom alcohol (typically 20-30% water) and denatured alcohol has some other additives which are quite toxic,  if folks are using that instead of lacquer thinner or acetone because due to toxicity concerns.   

Ethanol is hygroscopic but even putting it in a sealed bottle will not protect it forever.  Stability is achieved around 95% and that's where it inevitably ends up.  But the word you're looking for is azeotropic.  "Ethanol forms a positive azeotrope with water. The boiling point of a mixture of 95.6% ethanol (by weight) with 4.4% water is 78.1 °C, which is lower than the boiling point of pure water (100 °C) or pure ethanol (78.4 °C). Because the azeotropic mixture boils at a lower temperature, it is impossible to use simple distillation to produce ethanol at concentrations higher than 95.6%."

To produce actual anhydrous (that means without water) alcohol, a special techniques beyond simple distillation are required, things like molecular sieves.  Even then you are only achieving about 99% purity and the stuff folks are buying for things like mixing shellac or dissolving B72 or making their Everclear-tonic cocktail are not that level of purity.  Easy to find this info with a simple search.  

So grain alcohol, like Everclear is first fermented to produce a relatively low alcohol wash and then distilled.  Since the distillation process can't achieve a concentration of stronger than 95.6% that's what you get.  I know it's probably comes as a shock that labels might misrepresent what's actually in the bottle.

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-29-2025 13:56
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Poster Love,

I'm not sure if you're joking again or not, but It's kind of a silly notion about alcohol's flammability when you compare it to acetone, lacquer and lacquer thinner which are not only flammable but explosive like gasoline. 

Also the word is hygroscopic, and its easy to control by keeping it in a dry place as i do. One more thing about the 99.9% is that one can clearly see the superior absorption rate of it into the hammer felt, so at least you're starting with minimal water %.  I think the quoted 5% is a guess with no proof. (pun intended.

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-29-2025 12:32
From: David Love
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Just a small follow up here, the Steinway hammer solution is available from Wurdack, They don't sell it in concentrated form anymore, it's premixed. I did just order some out of curiosity. They would not tell me what their formula is, understandably, it's proprietary.

By the way for those who are using shellac, there really is no such thing as 100% grain alcohol. It is sold that way, but it's virtually impossible to distill all of the water out of grain alcohol. So even what's represented as 100% is probably more like 95%. Of course it's extremely flammable and you want be very careful with it. Denatured alcohol is something a little bit different and often has other chemicals in it as well like benzene. Some of those additives iactually inhibit the flakes from dissolving to some degree so you might want to strain it if you're using that.

------------------------------
David Love RPT
www.davidlovepianos.com
davidlovepianos@comcast.net
415 407 8320

Original Message:
Sent: 08-29-2025 08:25
From: Thomas Servinsky
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Original Message:
Sent: 8/29/2025 1:05:00 AM
From: Peter Acronico
Subject: RE: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

Original Message:
Sent: 8/28/2025 10:08:00 AM
From: Chris Chernobieff
Subject: RE: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

When i started voicing 3 decades ago, i used Lacquer exclusively. As time went on i tried B-72 and used it for a short time, about a year, then i made a big switch to Shellac. Shellac is amazing for voicing over the others. 

Lacquer is smelly and when you accidentally go past the point you want, reversing is difficult, and your left with a ping in the sound you have to mitigate.

B-72 behaves in the hammer the same way it does when you make it in the jar. It gums up. I had some Ronsen pillow puff hammers once. As an experiment, i sacked one hammer and started juicing, i wanted to see if B-72 would give me the fortissimo i want out of a pillow puff hammer. The hammer gunked up and fortissimo wasn't reached.  BTW, it's kind of snippety to say "choose the right hammer so little is needed". Of course,... but you don't always have that choice, and you don't always have control over the hammer set you get either. Ronsens, for example are all over the place from hard to soft, and rarely just right. 

The ONLY issue with shellac is it can yellow a hammer a little. But this turns out to a diluting issue. I think people have gone a little sideways about hardness and flexibility of a hardener.  I hear 10:1's, 4:1's no, no ,no. I'm more around 32:1, even 50:1 or thinner. You see the more flexible a "hardner" is, the heavier the dilution has to be. And looking back, i also used lacquer too thick.  I could use it to advantage today, but still the harsher chemicals or smell is not desirable to me. So i wanted to switch to an alcohol solvent for that reason. This comes to alcohol. I can't emphasize enough how important water % in alcohol is. You want 0% water. Everclear has 5%, denatured has 15%. That water works against you in hardening felt. So you don't really have the control you think you have and most likely blame the hammer for the difference between sets. I use 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. I was amazed at the absorption difference when i first used it. 

My hardeners of choice now are shellac and sandarac. Both are easily dissolved in alcohol. Both are natural tree resins with sandarac being the hardest. I dilute both very thin. At the recommended dilution shellac doesn't seem to yellow, or at least its not noticeable. I apply two drops of sandarac from the side above the moulding in a way it doesn't wick past the midpoint for fortissimo voicing. It usually only takes i application, rarely 2. With sandarac done this way, you no longer ever have to juice below 9 and 3 even on pillow puffs. Shellac, i use in two ways. When the sound is on the closed side but with a soft attack i only put shellac on the strike point. And when the sound is too open, then i'll apply it over the top to soak down to half way to the moulding ( i had already used sandarac).  

Another important point is the sound characteristics of each. To me lacquer sounds harsh and pingy, B-72 has a muddy quality, and shellac has a sweetness about its sound.

This next part may disturb people who need numbers but, when i dilute i go by eye. For example a 2 lb cut of shellac is a dark amber color. I dilute, until its a very light  yellow color like fresh apple juice, a couple shades above clear. 

To summarize you want a hardener to be hard, so you can dilute it to the extreme, so very little is used. Sandarac gives me the foundation to use shellac in this way.

-chris

------------------------------
On the page, it looked....nothing.
The beginning, simple, almost comic.
Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it..an oboe, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet sweetened it into a phrase of such delight.
This was no composition by a performing monkey!!

865-986-7720 (text only please)

Original Message:
Sent: 08-24-2025 21:07
From: Tim Foster
Subject: Lacquer suggestions for hammer voicing

I just installed some "voice up" hammers on my current rebuild. When I couldn't find HammerLac on the Schaff website, I called and they let me know that they've discontinued it. 

What other types of lacquer work similarly? I know Steinway uses Wurdack water white, but I'm not sure how to get that (does Steinway sell it directly?). 

Any alternative product suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

------------------------------
Tim Foster RPT
New Oxford PA
(470) 231-6074
------------------------------