Dear fellow PTG colleagues, Please Help! I have a customer whose Steinway studio is suffering from pinblock/backframe separation. There's a gap roughly in the center area [tenor/midrange] of at most 1/8 inch extending along the length of the block about 1 foot or so. Normally, I'd send some Titebond down into the gap w/ a thin feeler/knife/s.b. steel and then replace and/or supplement the plate screws with 5/16 x 5 or 6 inch bolts sent all the way thru the back of the piano, clamp the whole thing with pipe or c clamps and return in a day or 2 to remove the clamps. I generally have been able to do this without lowering the pitch and so far have not had any callbacks. The Steinway however has no room for introducing any bolts and has hardly any margin above the pin area for clamps to grab the plate. The t pin field in this center section [between the tenor break and the first plate screw in the treble section] is quite congested with the top row of pins right along the top edge of the plate. Can I just clamp [if I could find room to adequately position the clamps] the p.b. to the back frame and hope it would hold without the use of lag bolts? Or should I, as a trusted colleague of mine suggested, simply [?] introduce a band of epoxy into the gap to forestall further separation [he suggested that I create a dam inside [toward the bottom of] the gap to prevent epoxy from seeping into the tuning pin holes]? Your help in answering or forwarding this to whomever might provide some insight would be greatly appreciated, especially as I'd like to do it correctly the FIRST time and not suffer failure/callbacks. My customer is waiting for my response to her so I'm kind of desperate for an expedient response. Sincerely appreciating your help in advance, Sol Kohen, RPT [pianotek@aol.com]
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