Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Buckskin like concrete

I had a warranty job on a 1980 Baldwin console today. Been in customers house for a little over a month now, I tuned it shortly before it left the store. At this time played and sounded great. Was called to the customers house because of a knocking sound, I figured pencil or something easy etc... Turns out all, every single bit of buckskin from hammer butt buckskin, to backcheck buckskin was rock hard. It seriously felt like concrete. Customer stated that she heard nothing for about two weeks after getting piano then almost over night started hearing the clicking.
I have seen plenty of buckskin that was worn overtime etc... but nothing like this. Her house was at 72 degrees and 41% Humidity. The tuning was still almost spot on.
What could cause this? Remedy?

Baldwin made a boat load of this stuff and it is called "corfam." It is basically fake leather. The correct procedure is replacing all of the buckskin. Hammer butt leathers and butt heel leathers. It is a lot of work. I would venture a guess that perhaps someone in the store needled the leather enough to make the sound go away possibly, but that will not last. Replacement is the only hope for it.

Thanks for the info. I tried to needle it and couldn't hardly get a needle in it. Do they make any type of softener, for leather etc... that might work.

To my knowledge no. Especially because this stuff is not leather. That was one of Baldwins biggest mistakes was installing the Corfam. There are tens of thousands of pianos out there with that stuff in them. It was a disaster.

As bad as it sounds, your best bet is to replace them all. You will have a happy customer then.

Jerry gives good advice.

This the correct repair. I was a Baldwin dealer at the time -- in addition to being a technician. They sent out handy kits to do the job. It really isn't that bad to do. It can be even be done without removing the hammer butts. Whether that is any faster depends on what tools you have and how dexterous you are. It does save a bit of re-alignment.

I would be tempted to replace the butts - lock, stock and barrel. Those parts were crappy from the start, let's face it. The old hammers were most often hardened to a rock-like state. Put in nice new butts and hammers. The thing could finally feel, sound and play like a musical instrument.
(not a big fan of those clangy boxes)

Oh, yikes, did you say Warranty Tuning? I hope they don't shoot the messenger.

is not it a polyurethane material ?

did you try PU solvent to soften the material ? just for the experiment, it certainly should not last even if it works.

Why waste the time and energy Isaac if it isn't going to work anyway.

just curious, the Ecsaine we use today is a microfiber polyurethane, I wondered of any future instability of the product (but does not seem to be the case )

I believe the elasticisers, (sp?) in escaine are much more stable than the corfam. I have seen 25YO escaine that felt like new. But a real organic chemist from the fabric industry could tell us more authoritatively.

Thanks everyone for the info. The customer has decided to trade the piano back in on a new Kawai. Owner of the piano store has not decided what he wants to do on the Baldwin. I can't believe I have never run across this before, but at least now I know for the future.

Sounds like it worked out amazingly well for the dealer - instead of selling a 30+ year old clacker, he was able to sell a new piano. Better for the client as well. And better for the technician, not having to deal with the corfam. At least this time around.
A win-win-win situation.

Except the dealer is stuck with a piano that may cost more to make acceptable than he can sell it for,

I suggest we give each a little money to help that dealer

Hahaha. I feel sorry for the dealer... NOT! It's great that the dealer took it back and it was definately a win win for both of them, no doubt about that but, I find it mighty hard to believe the dealer wasn't aware of these Baldwin problems seeing as it is so wide spread.

The dealer has choices. Fix it and sell it for more, taking a little loss but, perhaps not because:

A: He probably only pays his technicians $15 an hour so if it took them 10 hours to fix it (an exaggeration in time but easier to figure) it would only cost him give or take, $150.00. Double that and he's made something on that part of it.

B: He sold them a new piano so that makes up some of the loss if he has any at all.

C: Trash it. It should never have been sold in that condition in the first place and frankly, I find it hard to believe it didn't start clacking until 2 weeks after delivery.... Something fishy in the tank about that one to me.... Any Baldwin I encounter with that stuff on it NOW always clacks.

Just a question in relation to this.... is corfam the only synthetic buckskin out there or are there other types which don't have this problem? I got a few rolls of the synthetic buckskin from years back, never used it for anything yet and it still feels fairly soft. Does corfam get hard from use, or just from age, or both?

No it is an old product, what you may have can be Ecsain or other similar microfiber. No problems in time for what I know. Widely used, it is easier than finding the correct leather

It went something like this.... Baldwin marketing people were sitting around in the think tank brainstorming over the 3 cent extra cost of leather scrap when... Behold !

Ricardo Montlaban popped up on TV with his " Rich Corinthian Leather" Chrysler Cordoba commercials... The rest as we know it was history.

Corfam have been used for shoes at those times, they all cracked after some months of use so the problems with the product where known soon, I suppose.

Finding similar leather qualities than the one we found in old instruments certainly became very difficult at some point.

Between a hard leather that is noisy and need numerous talcum/teflon application to be fine, and a syntehtic product that is used by Yamaha since 2 or 3 decades, I prefer the last (and there is some kind of "nap orientation"

See the yamaha backchecks, they dont wear particularely fast.
OK not at all the quality of the extra thick buckskin of older Steinways, but OK for me (expensive, it is )