Re; Pulley Keys

[Mark Dierauf]

>>Has anyone discovered any new methods to treat pulley keys? (How do we spell
>>pulley, pullie, pulle, pully--beats me). This is the condition where the
>>center rail pin holes in the keys become enlarged causing noise. We've sized
>>the holes with diluted glue. Which glue is best? It doesn't always work.

  I've always termed this condition "key chuck". Just recently I decided to
finally try to do something about a particularly bad case of it on my own piano,
a Fischer grand Ampico player. Not only did the keys chuck back and forth almost
a full 1/16th, but they also chucked side to side! Needless to say, they made
quite a bit of noise.
  I had been anticipating sending the keyboard & frame off to Seneca Piano Key
for their balance-rail repair job, where they replace the key buttons, keypins,
and also add (or replace) the key shoes. Before I did, though, I thought I'd try
to fix them by steaming and then glue sizing. Here is what I did:

  I got a good head of steam up in my old tea kettle on the stove, and held the
key's balance rail hole right in the flow for a couple of seconds only, not long
enough to loosen the balance rail bushing. Then I plugged a bushing caul into
the key button, to keep them from steaming loose. I then continued to steam for
10 - 15 seconds, while I watched the moisture begin to seep into and along the
grain at the top of the key button. Then I put a drop of very thin hot hide glue
into the hole. I had the glue just thick enough so that it wouldn't flow right
down the hole, but would cover the hole completely and just start to ooze down.
After a couple of seconds, I turned the key over and hit the hole again with the
steam. This would clear the inside of the hole of the glue, and I hoped, drive
the glue into the wood. Then I wiped off any excess glue and went on to the next
key.
  The result is that after two weeks in a very dry room, the worst keys have
only a minute amount of chuck - far less than many brand new pianos! I really
didn't expect this to work at all, let alone this well. An extra benefit is that
the steam fluffed up the bushings, so that they are now tight as well. The
entire job only took a couple of hours.
  These keys did not have shoes or inserts, and the key wood was sugar pine. If
your keyboard has shoes and this method doesn't work for you, then replacing the
shoes is not that bad a job. Let me know and I can post some tips for that
process that I've used in the past.

            Mark Dierauf
            Concord, NH

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