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Hand Stripping It is extremely important to make the distinction between hand stripping and dipping. Hand stripping, as the name suggests, is performed by hand. Several coats of professional strength stripper are applied to the piano's veneer with a brush and then removed with a hand-held scraper. Once the old lacquer has been removed, the wood is washed--again, by hand--with a professional strength thinner and steel wool. "Dipping" is a process in which the piano's various parts are literally--and repeatedly--dipped into a vat of stripper until the old lacquer falls off. The greatest risk involved in "dipping" is the stripper's potential to penetrate and ultimately damage the wood itself. Although it is certainly more time-consuming, hand stripping is by far the best method if one is to preserve the original state of the wood.
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