hi there I'm Michael Stinnett with the
antique piano shop and we're here right
now to talk about the difference between
plastic keys and ivory keys one of the
most common questions that we have from
folks is are my piano keys plastic or
are the ivory and how can I tell the
difference the way that you can tell
that your piano has real ivory is that
the ivory key is going to be in two
pieces you have your head and you have
your tail the two pieces joined like
this on the wood surface of the key to
create your key top notice that ivory is
only a top of the key the actual key
itself is made of wood this is the kind
of piano key that you would find on new
pianos today it's stark white plastic
it's made entirely of one piece
including the front most pianos built
after about 1960 you're going to have
piano keys like this most of the people
that send their pianos to the antique
piano shop to be restored want to have
their ivory keys restored if possible we
go to great lengths to restore genuine
ivory and we have stacks of old ivory
here that we've saved on pianos that
have had to be discarded we're usually
able to restore an ivory keyboard but in
rare exceptions it's not practical to
try to restore the ivory when we can't
restore the ivory key we use a faux
ivory key top which you see here the
faux ivory key tops come in two pieces
you have the top of the key and the
front that goes onto the front of the
key separately faux ivory has a grain
defect that looks like real ivory and
it's off color just like real ivory is
it's not stark white a little bit gray
with the graining effect it actually
looks really good on an antique piano
when it's been restored one day I had a
child come up to me and say hey mister
if my piano keys are ivory how come my
elephant had so many cavities of course
he's referring to the black keys on the
piano the black keys also called sharps
and flats are generally made of ebony
wood here we have an original evany
sharp you can see it's a solid piece of
wood and it's shaped like the piano key
that you we know this is a piece of real
evany wood from which a piano key is
made evany is very rare it's not
endangered yet but it may be one day
it's very dense it's very heavy and this
piece of wood right here actually weighs
what a piece of Kong
this size would weigh it's extremely
heavy it sounds like stone and it feels
like stone that's the reason evany wood
is used for piano keys because it's so
incredibly hard and so incredibly
adorable now last but not least we have
new plastic sharps which is what this is
basically these are just molded plastic
key tops that you find on most pianos
hard plastic clear shiny so if you go
down to your new piano store today white
plastic and black plastic is what you're
going to have on your piano keyboard so
if you're going to buy a piano or have
your piano restored why not get real
ivory and real ebony after all that's
what it's all about
evany and ivory
you