TP coils

[Susan Kline]

Dear Bill,

I have a little thing that might help you around this quandary. You don't
need to either remove the pin, or make the coil in place with the old end.
Make a coil in the regular way on a spare pin, and move it over. I use a
tuning pin which I hacksawed to half-length, with the new end rounded over,
so it can get nearer the pressure bar on spinets. 

I think, myself, that it's worth the minor stretching of a new wire end
when splicing, rather than robbing the neighboring coil for a little bit of
wire. With a fresh piece of wire, you can put a very good coil of the right
size on the old pin, only turning the pin out one or one and a half turns,
and not disturbing the other half of the wire at all. If you use the usual
squeezing and tapping procedures, the amount of stretching won't be much,
and the new coil will be secure, without the little piece sticking out. 

That's my take on it, anyway. I don't like splicing, either, and just
learned it for the exam, but there have been times when I use it: old
covered sounding bass strings, where a new wire would stand out, sounding
far too bright; and long treble wires with a player action in the way,
where one really _couldn't_ get a new wire in without removing things which
shouldn't be moved.

Susan

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>     Knowing this, I very occasionally use the same technique when splicing a
> string using the remaining broken off end.  There are different
approaches to
> doing this.  Yat-Lam Hong always taught that one should use "normal
stringing
> procedure" when splicing a string.  I can't really say that he was wrong to
> advocate this. However, there might just be a reason why I would not want to
> remove the tuning pin entirely, use a new piece of wire, make a new coil and
> redrive it.  I may well want to back it out just a bit and make a coil right
> there with what is left. Sometimes, having the protruding tang helps form a
> perfect becket and make a proper coil more easily by having a stop for the
> coil on the opposite side as Del pointed out.  
>
>While I don't consider this proper for work on fine instruments, it may be
> useful as a temporary fix when time is critical or as a functional repair on
> an old upright, especially for one of the wound strings. "Sometimes you just
> gotta do what you gotta do when you gotta do it."  So I've heard people say.
>
>Bill Bremmer RPT
>Madison, Wisconsin
> 
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