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I recently made a huge mistake of "dusting" my Steinway with the end of a plastic vacuum wand. It did not remove any of the finish, however, I am able to see the marks of where I had touched the wand to the wood. I use Steinway polish, but it does not remove the marks. Is there such a thing as rubbing compound or another product that I can use to get my piano back to where it should be?
Thank you for any help.

The lacquer finish on a Steinway is very soft and unforgiving, as you unfortunately discovered. The best advice would be to have an expert in satin lacquer piano finishing come to tend to it. Short of that, you can take one of those green and yellow scrubee sponges, made by 3M, and lightly brush the scratch, with the green side, in the direction of the other lines on the finish. If done properly, that will alleviate the problem nicely.

The abrasiveness of the green scotch brite pad should get rid of the scuff-marks from the vacuum.

You may find however, that the area you rubbed is now a much lower sheen than the surrounding area. To help blend it back it with the surrounding area you would need #0000 (very fine) steel wool.

The Green 3M pad is to corse for lacquer/hand rubbed finish. #0000 steel wood as CTPianotech
mentioned should be plenty abrasive enough to "cut" lacquer. If the scratch is deep which is probably not the case, you need to wet sand it first You have to be careful on Steinways, especially black in that they do not shoot a clear coat over black, only on wood finishes. Rubbing out a piano on big surfaces is an art in itself.

I have done no piano refinishing, but have made and refinished lots of furniture and other wooden items. I agree with Pianobroker--the green Scotchbrite pads are quite coarse. I would recommend nothing coarser than 0000 steel wool, and would start off using a very light touch.

Rennie,

It sound like a minor blemish, that bothers you some. I'd hate to see you change it into a major blemish that bothers you enormously.

If you can afford it, consider contacting your tech to take care of it, or recommend someone that can.

You'll note that I emphasized the word lightly in my advice to you. Also, despite the scotch brite pad being more coarse than the steel wool, it is a much softer material than the steel in the steel wool. I would not have recommended it had I not used it sucessfully on Steinway finishes in the past. That being said, as the other experts here have indicated, this takes a great deal of care and precision in order not to create a bigger problem. The #0000 steel wool is a good option as well.

Rennie, I would strongly recommend that you experiment with another surface before you work on your Steinway. The cheapest way to do that is to buy a small can of lacquer, pant a mall piece of wood with it, let it dry and then cut it down flat with 1200 and only then try finishing it with steel wool. Bring that sample right next to your Stainway and compare the results.

From my experience OOOO leaves far too fine marks on the lacquer surface – 00 and even 0 may be more suitable – that is why you have to compare your experimental result with the finish of your Steinway. Spray the area with water if you don’t want the rubbed area to appear grey at the end. Also, practice doing marks in straight lines because it tends to be natural for our hands to do circular motions.

When you finally feel confident I would still advise you to rub a small areas in the hardly seen parts of the piano before embarking on the eye level finish.

Good luck!

It's interesting how one can achieve good results by different methods.
Hey Mr.G in the final stage of a hand rubbed lacquer finish(after wetsanding to ?)I kinda feel that one wants the final stage steel wool stridation lines to be as fine as possible. 00 or 0 will cut the lacquer leaving it somewhat streaky in it's final stage. Isn't the goal to make the stridation marks as less visable as possible.
When you do ebony satin do you shoot clear over black and than rub out the clear ?
Always learning.

The only time I ever use the Green 3M pads is to preliminary cut an old cured polyester finish in eventually making it satin. Only for small jobs. It also works great in cleaning strings.

I honestly want to know: is this discussion about how refinishers create or touch-up a black satin finish? Or are people really suggesting that the piano owner, of whose abilities we know nothing, take a pad of steel wool to his/her $50,000 Steinway?

I think Upright Tooner is the only one who is anywhere near giveing the needed advice when he suggests to bring in a technician or a refinisher.

Rennie: most often, when an inexperienced person attempts to "touch up" a little spot or mark, it ends up becoming a large spot. One more thing to consider.

Hi pianobroker,

I always give advice from the point of view that the person asking, especially when on the phone or in our case in this forum, does not have any experience at all. It is not a demeaning view on others but a form of foundation to start communication. That is why I am recommending Rennie to experiment with other surface(s) before, God forbid, does further damages to that Steinway. Thinking after I posted I realized that any other painted surface will suffice to experiment with different scourers and/or steel wool. The purpose of such advice is to demonstrate to the uninitiated that different brand of same abrasive materials, be that sand papers, scourers, steel wools, and/or cutting compounds leave differend end results. That difference then is what has to be compared to the work in need of restoration. After all, Rennie does not have the luxury to express her own understanding of what can be achieved with scourers/steel wool but to imitate an already existing finish.

Mind you, I actually know exactly what is needed as an abrasive in this case but have to protect certain trade secrets reveled to me from Steinway NY polishing section because I work very closely with their appointed agents in NSW and QLD in Australia.

Locally the American finish is not popular at all and dealers do not keep it in stock except when pre ordered by customers. I only restore trade-ins and/or stock sourced out locally. My biggest such restoration was a few years ago when one two year old Boston grand was shipped across from the States, wrapped in bubble wrap, and o shlock horror, ALL lacquered parts WERE, what I call ‘bubble wrap kissed’. In my pragmatic approach to problems of this caliber I just cut it down to 600 and resprayed the whole piano with blackened lacquer.

I pigment myself all clear lacquers and undercoats and do practice what is known in the automotive industry ‘base coat clear coat’ finishes because it is not needed in our field. Some do that just to increase the appearance of depth in the finish but none of the polyester finishes have a clear coat over black base coat. Some time ago there was a Bosendorfer refinished in Germany that had a ‘clear over’ and I had to restore it the way it was done initially. A large part of my work is imitating previous finished because after repair I respray a large amount of piano parts while the rest of the piano is in shops and client’s houses.

I hope this answered your questions but if not do ask again.

Jurgen,
Upright Tooner was NOT the only person to advise the poster as you say. Here is the first part of my quote from the very first response in this thread:

The lacquer finish on a Steinway is very soft and unforgiving, as you unfortunately discovered. The best advice would be to have an expert in satin lacquer piano finishing come to tend to it

However, knowing the way people are on this forum, many, it seems, are reluctant to spend the money to do the right thing when it comes to technical matters. Of course this person doesn't need to be told by any of us that having an expert come in to fix this is the best option. Yet he asked the question anyway, which signals to me that he does not want to go this route. Therefore, we are trying to guide him to do the least damage possible. I am not at all comfortable with the idea of a novice taking steel wool, or anything else, to a piano's finish, but you know as well as I that most of these people are going to do it anyway just to save a buck. The other question I ask myself is "why was this person dusting a piano with a vacuum cleaner, and not a proper dusting cloth?"

My thoughts too...

Rennie,
I have no idea what is in the Steinway Polish or other polishes that you have used. Clean it/them off before doing any rub out. If you try steel wool only buy high quality wool made for finish work. You can get 3M abrasive pads of various grit equivalants made for finish work and sometimes these are a better option than wool because the wool leaves bits of steel fibers behind.
If all of the above posted suggestions leave you a bit nervous - they should. Any finish work on a piano is not easy and your piano is not something that you want to learn on.
If you want the repair to look perfect - spend the money and have it done by a pro.

A friend of mine is a local refinisher. He does some of the best work that I have ever seen. When he's done, you will NOT be able to see where the original blemish was.

One time, I asked him the very things you all are discussing in this thread above and this was his answer... "People "attempt" to repair something themselves with the thought of saving money. They do not know what that pianos wood is made of. High gloss? Low gloss? Poly? Lacquer? They really have no idea what is really involved with outer layers of the "skin" a piano." He said, "a repair that might have only cost them $75-$150 to touch it up to start out with, in 90 % of the cases, or more, turns out to be a very large screw up that now might cost them upwards of $300 to as much as $1,000 on one job, or much more depending on badly they just screwed it up." He continued, "is that really worth the attempt to fix it yourself that much?"

[edited] I think it is bad advice to tell them how to do it themselves because of how the damage occurred.

If a person can't even dust their precious Steinway without damaging it, how smart is it to make them think they can fix it with steel wool or scratch pads? It's crazy.

Jerry, you are spot on - I rest my case.

Turning out to be a hot topic. Everybody's .02 cents is equaling about -.30 cents. about now.
I agree one should bite the bullet and hire a refinisher that is familiar with Steinway hand rubbed lacquer finishes.

One last .02 to add,The green 3M pad is equivelent to 800 sandpaper. If one is gonna use any 3M pad for final stage rub out ,one could wetsand with the gray and than the white pad therefore not even using any steel wool period.
One thing we notice with Steinway black aside from not shooting a clear coat over their black which we always do is that they actually machine buff the piano after they completely rub it out giving it a semigloss look. No trade secrets here.

If this is a satin rubbed finish 4/0 steel wool moistened with a bit of slightly soapy water as lube can take out surface marks. HOWEVER, the rubbed satin finish has a "grain" and rubbing must be done with the grain in a very straight line. It is not as easy as it sounds and NOT for non-professionals. You will be much happier with the results if you contact your dealer and pony up for a qualified touch-up pro.

Hi Supply,
I am sorry but have to disagree with you on this moral dilemma.

Firstly, why do you have to belittle a potential client only because she/he has damaged his or her piano? In my experience, damages done by owners of pianos are pure accidents and nothing to do with their intellectual capacities to perfume basic tasks such as vacuum cleaning.

Secondly, all professional in all sorts of fields do give opinions – lawyers, doctors, dentist, plumbers, electricians etc etc etc. A pharmacist will dispense his or her advice and medication over the counter knowing quite well that if anybody misused them that may have grave effect on any one.

And so is the case of Rennie who has followed the standard advice by the manufacturer to use Steinway polish and pray for the best. We all know that if Rennie is not caustios with our advices this could further complicate the initial damage.

And if Rennie has ever read this topic after posting, I guess he or she has discovered that the best do not come in a bottled version and at cost of $9.95. Instead, we come in the form of years of experience and aiming only at being the best. Being the best, in my view, also involves giving sound advice and fair warnings of misuse.

I see where you are coming from.
Personally, I am just not the type who will "arm" someone with just enough "knowledge" to go out and create a bigger problem for themselves. Frankly, I think it is borderline unethical.

We know all about the dangers of a little bit of knowledge...
And even a chapter's worth of good reading will not impart to anyone the experience needed before they should "go for it" on a piano, especially an expensive one such as a Steinway.

Now, if this thread had begun as a discussion among piano finishers about various methods of spot repair, that would be a totally different story. But the original poster will justifiably relate all the answers to his/her original query to the scratches on the Steinway they own. That is what worries me.

Maybe I spend too much time looking out for others??? :rolleyes: