These Keys are not for locks.

For those of you who would like to know how it's done...
...here is the last "KeyTop" repair I did.
PVC-E Glue is a special water soluable glue that dries hard and holds great.
The glue is applied to the wood side then the keytop placed on top. The brass "iron" is then clamped on top of the keytop.
The Clamped on iron is then heated to cure the glue. It should not get hot enough to burn any of the wood or discolor the keytop - very high heat will yellow the ivory...then you're really in a mess...


The Clamped keytops are then left to harden. The glue never really dries - it just sort of hardens- but hardens clear.

Here is my assistant showing all but six (He left the other six in the garage)

He's a real show-off.

One of the issues I had to deal with is about 60 of these keytops came to me in a 'baggie'...a real puzzle to figure out which keytop went with which key. My other helper (wife) sat and did a remarkable job in matching up the keytops to their respective keys. It was with the subtle hints of all the years of 'finger dirt' which gave away the locations to which the keytops belong.

Since the 'keybacks' were also loose, they were reglued again also. In all, it was 6-weeks of glue-intensive work. The actual labor involed was pretty minimal but the time to set the glue and remove the glue that squeezes out is the laborious part.

This was a perfect job- because when I looked at my OWN piano- I thought, "Wow -I gotta make mine look like this."

(I got a new micrometer outta the deal- to help measure the key-widths and the keytop variances.)
I consider myself an expert now at installing keytops. Anyone have any spare keys laying around?