This might sound like a crazy question but it’s surprisingly important and if you own a piano there are a quite a few things you should know about the various types of finishes. Refinishing a piano is an enormous expense and something that can be avoided with proper care and maintenance.
The classic American finish of a piano is a satin hand-rubbed lacquer finish. It’s an extremely popular type of finish but it’s also very important to know how to maintain properly. You might notice that when you place your hands on your piano you may leave fingerprints. If you use light cleaning products you can wipe these off but you’re leaving yourself open to a larger problem down the road. These types of finishes are porous and if you use cleaning products, they will eventually soak into the finish and will have to be professionally removed later on.
So how do you clean a classic satin finish to avoid additional costs later on? The best thing to do is to use a soft cotton cloth rubbing in the direction of the hand-rubbed lines. If you have fingerprints that have gotten deeply ingrained into the finish, then you should use a slightly damp (not wet) cotton cloth and again, rub in the direction of the hand-rubbed lines. This is the best way to clean a finish like this to avoid damage. And it’s all you need to do to maintain the finish in most cases.
The newer type of finish popularized a few decades ago is the high-gloss polyester finish. When these finishes were first introduced, people thought they would be fragile. To demonstrate their stability, companies at trade shows years ago lit them on fire to show their strength! So, can you destroy this type of finish with your hands? While they might show more fingerprints than a satin type of finish, you can’t easily damage this type of finish with your hands because they are plastic! They are sealed so they aren’t porous so the oils in your hands don’t seep in.
That’s not to say that high gloss finishes aren’t without their problems. If you were to take a music book and toss it onto a high gloss lid of a piano when it’s closed, it can cause scratches and lines in the finish that are impossible to remove except by an expert refinisher. So each of these two types of finishes can be damaged in different ways.
Cleaning a high-gloss finish is rather simple. You can actually use a damp cloth or even Windex to clean any fingerprints or dirt off the piano.
There is another way in which you can damage the finish of a piano and that is by simply playing it! Any serious pianist who plays a good deal will eventually scratch their fall boards and a lot of the times it can go all the way down to the grain of the wood. My father Morton Estrin (mortonestrin.com) had a Steinway his father gave him years ago which my sister now owns, and you can see the deep indentations in the fall board exposing the wood as a result of years of practice. You may think that you don’t scratch the fall board of your piano, but if you look closely, you will see at least gentle lines if you play a good deal. The good news is that the fall board is fairly inexpensive to refinish when the time comes. I have had the fall board on my piano refinished a couple of times!
Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729. If you have any other questions please contact me directly.