Encapsulating a keyboard

[amybee]

Hi everyone,

I am a new member looking for advice on a project my husband and I are working on. I have no experience working with resin so please excuse my ignorance.

I have a digital piano that has died a painful death. The piano has been replaced by our insurance company, but I cannot bear to part with the old one, as it has great sentimental value to me.

We have gutted the piano and are planning on turning it into a desk. I would like to keep the keyboard as part of the desk surface. We toyed with the idea of putting a piece of glass across the top, but as the keyboard is not level and the black keys obviously stick up higher than the white keys, securing the glass and preventing dust from getting into the keyboard seems difficult.

My husband has come up with the idea of encasing the keyboard in clear resin, so that the surface can be level and suitable for a desktop despite the slope of the keyboard. The entire keyboard can be removed in one piece so we would like to encapsulate it in its entirety.

My questions are: is this possible? Is it practical? And how do we achieve this? Can we build a form around the keyboard that can be removed once the resin has set? And will the resin hold up as a desktop, or will it scratch too easily?

Thanks in advance.

[Fleafa]

Possible, perhaps not all that practical. What size is it?
That volume of clear resin would be very expensive, even if you use polyester, not polyurethane. PE is horrible to work with and could go quite wrong. Both would scratch easier than glass. Think of the hardness of fibreglass boats etc. as a guide to the scratch-resistance.

[RageofAchilles]

Hi there,
I have to agree with fleafa here. While it is certainly possible to do, it would be vastly expensive and possible dangerous on such a scale. The process of clear resin encapsulation works fine for small objects. Larger objects are just not practical in a home environment Large scale use of clear resin is pretty much exclusive to modern artists and industrial applications.

The trouble with most clear resins is that they are quite toxic and may require post cure baking to achieve pull hardness. Such a volume would also generate a lot of heat and fumes. And may even melt the keyboard. Some resins allow a stepped application where you pour in stages, but the finished result would be far from perfect as a work surface.

Your best bet may just be a glass topped box to form the desk top, sometimes the simplest answer is also the best and most practical.

good luck

[amybee]

Thanks very much. We started pricing resin and also came to the conclusion that it would be very expensive. We'll reconsider the glass option. Thanks again