At 05:35 PM 8/10/2010, you wrote: >Susan, >That’s what I was thinking, too. The piano has >been nicely restored (for a change) and was >refinished about 10 years ago, so it looks >pretty nice, still. The refinisher did not have >woodworking skills, however. This does not look >like recent damage. It is a result of PMS (post >moving syndrome as Isaac calls it) and just old >age. This last move finally did it in. I want >it to be functional as well as nice looking. > >I have the woodworking skills I guess what I was >wondering was if anyone had invented a better mouse trap. >jeannie If that much is missing, Jeannie, I think what I'd do is chisel out a 1/4" slot (for a brass strip) up at the top, where the front of the big flathead screw in the keyblock will rest, make it several inches long on the inner side, and take it to the edge of the keyslip on the outer edge, countersink one screw hole on the short side, and two holes on the long side, then epoxy the whole thing in to fill up any missing wood deeper than the 1/4". That would leave you enough wood (and epoxy) remaining to hold the screws in place. Then make a wood inlay for the lower part, where the screw will just slide past. It won't get a lot of strain, only contacting the screw head in the keyblock as the slip is being installed. If you use wood for the whole thing, then you're just depending on the glue to hold it in. I had a similar situation (only MUCH worse) with the lyre of a 1901 Knabe concert grand. The lyre had two big fat dowels coming out the top, sliding into cylindrical holes in the keybed, and held in place by hinge pins (well, lyre pins, one would say) through little holes in the sides. And one of the holes had to be slanted, to miss the shift lever. Hence on that side (the right pedal side) only 1/4" of keybed wood was holding the whole thing in, even when it was brand new. When I met the piano the first time, the lyre was hanging by the very tip of the right lyre pin, held by 1/4" of (egged out) wood on the far side of the hole, plus a little help from the other pin, which was very loose but still more or less intact, since the pin hadn't had to slant. Somebody had obviously installed an inlay on the bad side, because the wood of the keybed had a large smooth section exactly 1/4" below the keybed surface. The inlay was completely gone. I took a rubbing of the area missing the inlay. I found a scrap piece of 1/4" mild steel plate. I hacksawed and ground it to match the missing area, and drilled and countersunk three holes for substantial flat head wood screws into the keybed. Installing it was cute. It was slightly proud of the hole for the dowel, and I was filing and grinding it with a dremel, periodically trying to get the lyre back on. I was under the piano on my back trying to keep metal filings out of my eyes when the pastor walked in ... Eventually I got it installed, but there was still the problem of the egged out lyre pin holes. I ended up sliding matt board between the top of the lyre and the underside of the keybed, and eventually the lyre was rock steady. It stayed that way for a number of years, until the piano, which had ended up belonging to the Newport Arts Center after the Community Concerts folded, got traded to Portland as partial payment for Newport's new Steinway D. I wish I knew where that big old Knabe ended up -- it gave us some wonderful concerts -- an object lesson about what different artists can do when unexpectedly presented with a 19th century sound, but in a decent well-regulated piano. It must have lived on the West Coast for many years -- the board was still in very good shape. (The pianists didn't need to know it had a Langer action in it -- you couldn't tell from playing it.) Some of them made a real meal of it, with enthusiasm. A few obviously hated it, but they weren't the ones I enjoyed listening to anyway. Community Concert artists going to a small town on the Oregon coast probably expected a beat out Yamaha in a school gym, so it was fun giving them something better, but not your average Steinway D, for sure. Susan Kline > > >---------- >From: caut-bounces at ptg.org >[mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kline >Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 4:42 PM >To: caut at ptg.org >Subject: Re: [CAUT] slipping key slip > >I greatly favor the repair Ron showed us, over this. > >I don't think that making an inlay on both sides >would be too hard. One could also inlay 1/4" >brass instead of maple, held in by short >flathead screws, with the edges filed to bevels, >but I would use wood instead, unless the piano gets beat up a lot. > >Susan Kline > > > >Apparently, only one side of the wedge is necessary. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100810/1a336731/attachment-0001.htm>
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