Soap damaged pinblocks?

[Horace Greeley]

Carol,

It's parafin, not soap - and there is no fix, except a new pinblock.

Horace

At 04:53 PM 2/23/97 -0800, you wrote:
>        I hope this question has not been posed before.  If so please direct
>me to where!  I encountered a Steinway L, serial #474??? (circa 1981) that
>has a few loose tuning pins in the bass.
>
>        What makes these pins special, is that they are near the plate
>screws that hold the pinblock to the plate.  Since the pinblock is very
>narrow in the bass, only 4 or 5 tuning pins are affected if I think I have
>the problem diagnosed.  My suspicion is that soap was used on these plate
>screws as a lubricant when the piano was assembled in the factory, and that
>the soap has traveled over the years into the adjacent tuning pin holes.
>All the other tuning pins in the piano are fine, and all other "first row
>pins" aren't as close to plate screws as these in the bass are.
>
>        I replaced the worst pin with another one just slightly larger, and
>it worked just fine. I am on borrowed time with about 3 others.  My question
>is:  if soap really leached into these tuning pin holes, am I not on
>borrowed time with my bigger pins?  The piano is not that old, what is the
>long term solution?  Should I be thinking about swabbing these tuning pin
>holes with something that will dissolve the soap?  Will I eventually have to
>"plug" these holes and if so, what is to keep the soap from loosening the
>glue around the plugs?
>
>Thanks for your help!
>
>Carol Beigel, RPT
>Greenbelt, Maryland
>
>
>
Horace Greeley

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
	and I'm not sure about the former."

		-	Albert Einstein

Stanford University
email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
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