Re: [Harp-L] cleaning contaminated harps question

Mark Russillo <jruss433@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:49:58 -0700 (PDT)

Tom -

  I had a similar flash-flood situation when I was living in DC almost 20 years ago.  Mine were in a briefcase on the floor of my '71 Nova that got flooded to the headrests overnight.  It was 2 days before the water receded and I had 23 harps in those days.  I wrote off all the wood combs (marine bands, blues harps and a Brazilian Sonadora tremolo) as trashed because they were swollen from the flood water.  I opened up and cleaned the plastic comb harps with alchohol and played them a while.

  Of course, in those days, I played harder than I do now and, eventually, those harps also went in the hole with a series of bad reeds  - but with what I know now I would say that it was not because of the water.

  Interestingly enough, I also had a Promaster in those days.  I still have that Suzuki and it's problem is the valves that I have never replaced.  I would say that you still have some tangible assets.

  Mark Russillo
  a.k.a. The Rhode Island Kid

Tom Stuckert <t_stuckert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
  Listers:

Our house was flooded about 4 weeks ago with a combination of sewage and creek water. We had 3 feet of water in the house. Unfortunately all of my harps (except 4) were in a case that was on the floor under all the water for 3 days.

I had to throwawa the case as well as all the individual cases for the harps. My question (and probably a dumb one) is this: Can any of these harps be saved? Can they be cleaned and seralizeed so I don't get some dreaded disease from playing them? Or, should I just throwo them all away?

I had in this collection harps with wooden combs, some with plastic combs and 1 Suzuki Promaster valved (metal comb) harp.

If any of you have thoughts on the above, please post to the list or to my email address t_stuckert@xxxxxxxxx

Thanks

Tom
Findlay, OH

---------------------------------
Luggage? GPS? Comic books? 
Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search.
_______________________________________________
Harp-L is sponsored by SPAH, http://www.spah.org
Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx
http://harp-l.org/mailman/listinfo/harp-l