Well, I have had all I can stand without having my say.  Silicone
adhesive in player pianos?  Preposterous!  Other words come to mind.
Stupid, destructive, appalling, dangerous, unhealthy, idiotic,
corrosive, all come to mind, but to try to be civil I will stick to
preposterous.

RTV, GE [General Electric] or whatever variety you wish to talk about,
it is all bathtub caulk.  I call it silicone seal since that is what it
was first called.  There are two kinds.  Style one smells like acetic
acid or vinegar.  Style two smells like lacquer thinner.  The vinegar
variety was first out and now all of them are becoming the style two.

Style one will come apart but is very difficult nearly impossible to
remove from anything it was on.  Style two will not come apart for any
reason.  It too will not come off whatever it was stuck on and I have
not found a solvent that will get it off.  Much worse than style one
for removal.

Silicone seal on wood is one of the most appalling things to come from
the twisted mind of modern man.  I know of no player piano that I need
to make watertight.  Silicone seal of every kind is made to make water
run right off whatever it is put on.  I have spent some of the most
useless, difficult hard work in my player piano and pipe organ shop
trying to remove silicone seal from what appalling novices put it on.

Many, many people have thought this was the "bee's knees" when it
came to hacking a pneumatic system into working condition.  Originally
I found silicone seal on antique pneumatic cloth.  The attempt was to
make the rotting cloth and rubber hold air long enough to get the
player piano sold and out the door.  It lasted only a few months.

I have also seen it used on antique gaskets to make them airtight.
Usually it was globbed up on the sides inside and out.  I have seen
silicone seal slathered over all wood pieces inside and out of various
channels, and boards.  Most of it was loose since they put it on boards
sized with shellac or glue.  Trying to get it off of a raw wood board
is next to impossible, and try gluing real glue over it and watch it
bead up and fall off.  I have had to go to the woodworkers shop and
actually make new pieces when that stuff was used in most cases.

Let us remember we are caretakers of history now.  There is only one
player manufacturer still making players.  There are no longer 400
brands of pianos out there putting players into their products.

Everything we restore will last as long as our pneumatic cloth and
leather are functional and then everything must be restored again.
This length of time is or should be 30 years or more.  I put everything
into my restorations to push that to 50 years but I know someday even
my restorations will need re-doing.  Because of the nutritional
supplements I use I thoroughly believe I will be around another 100
years and in good enough health to restore these instruments 50 or more
years from now.  I only pray I never have to re-restore any of those
poor players that will be mangled by people trying this RTV experiment.

For one thing with what I have studied about the immune system, every
time we are subjected to toxic fumes it deteriorates a small bit of our
immune system.  We are found to now be missing about 30% of our normal
immune function because of how we eat and losing another 3% annually.
Do you want to push that even farther by filling your lungs with
caustic fumes?  Besides, what are those fumes going to do to the metal
and wood inside the player over decades?  We don't know the amount of
long term toxic fumes emanating from dried silicone seal.  When does it
start to break down and offgas toxins like most synthetic items were
found to do decades after their use.  Hot hide glue is non toxic, you
can eat it, and you do if you like Jello.  It puts out no fumes when
being used or once dry.

I have restored players for well over 30 years and while doing that I
have seen many well meaning "new" products for restoration of players
and pipe organs: Perflex, Polylon, Saran Wrap, Naugahyde, Elmer's glue,
contact cement, Superglue, silicone seal, Gorilla glue.  I have seen
them all used on players and I have been paid the big bucks to remove
most of them and make it play correctly.

I have certain places I use Elmer's, PVC glues, Superglue.  I even keep
Silicone Seal for use once or twice a year.  They may all have their
place but I would never use them on the wrong things.  I use Saran Wrap
to hold sandwiches or to keep stripper from drying out when stripping
shellac, but I don't plan to use Saran Wrap as pouches.  I will use
Naugahyde for belly cloths but I will never cover bellows with it or
use it for valve facings.

RTV should be used for what it is made for: to seal the outside of your
recreational vehicle or mobile home when it leaks.  Don't get that
stuff anywhere near my pneumatics.

D.L. Bullock
www.dougbullock.ws