Hello Gerry, No one answered this as I would have that I could find who answered you on the list. I hesitated because I am having trouble remembering a complete list of what I experienced in this process both participating in and the supervising of it. I will try to remember the essential parts of what we did in Oberlin as a type of summer job for student help in the 80's. Some of it was Steinway specific. I will add some description of benefits I see. 1. Tighten all case hardware, and shim stripped screws as necessary. This I would say was the best part of the procedure. It eliminated a fair amount of case buzzing. As a result, virtually all the lid hinge screws remained intact at Oberlin. I wish I could say the same for pianos at other schools. This had other practical significance. For instance, we also did this to the stack. We all know what loose and stripped stack screws can do to regulation. 2. Wipe down piano with Murphy's oil soap water, next to no Murphy's oil soap, and with cheese cloth. Try to follow grain of piano finish. 3. Vacuum piano throughout, removing action. This had obvious benefits. I still have trouble getting into the habit of doing this myself these days at an institution frequently without the student help for a summer cleaning procedure. Careful, some people do not realize jamming the vacuum cleaner end around the tuning pins can screw up the tuning. 4. Run cloth between strings and soundboard with jimmy, duck taped on the end. Need to be careful doing this as that the jimmy can slip off the rag and scratch the soundboard. 5. Regulate Damper stop rail. The damper stop rail on Steinways tends to ride up the screws over time. It is not too difficult to train someone just to do this correctly. 6. Pedal repairs. This entailed checking the pedals for lateral motion. This problem develops in other pianos besides Steinway for different reasons. Remove and repair as necessary. General summer cleaning process a great time for doing this. Frequently a problem with heavy use pianos. 7. Turning front rail pins to mitigate loose bushings. Not too difficult to do, and did protract life of the bushing. 8. Lube key bed and bottom of key frame, glides. Shift pedal problems diminished. I am sure I am forgetting some of this, but I can't remember anything else we did every year. The following we did intermittently: 1. Lube knuckles. No need for debate on what is best for this. We did it. Not necessary every year. 2. Lube key frame Again, no need for debate. Removing the keys also aided the cleaning process. Time was a consideration. 3. Move capo strings side to side to eliminate capo buzz. One way of improving problems with capo buzz, we thought, involved taking a large screwdriver and shoving the capo strings side to side far as possible, and spacing them to the string grooves on the hammer again. Obviously some tuning is involved, not necessarily from the cleaning crew. There are obviously other possibilities. Inter alia, this enabled us to establish a screening process for determining who really wanted to learn about piano technology, and who was just fooling around. A luxury student help gives if you have it. From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of G Cousins Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 10:38 AM To: CAUT Subject: [CAUT] summer procedures Does anyone have, or wish to share, thoughts on summer servicing procedures? Priortizing. Servicing levels, Regulating, Tuning, Cleaning, Cabinet repairs etc. Maybe in the archives but one of the plebes inquired to see my tick list for summer instrument servicing procedures for the inventory. Perhaps if there's nothing available, I can consolidate into one practical doc for all. Much appreciated, Gerry Gerry Cousins,RPT Lead Instrument Technician West Chester University of PA gcousins at wcupa.edu<mailto:gcousins at wcupa.edu> is est quinque alicubi -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20090513/d03272d8/attachment-0001.htm>
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