> > I can't speak about any other factories, but when I complained about this practice at > Baldwin I was told that this practice had been developed to prevent the string from > slipping out of the hole. (In Baldwin's case the string goes entirely through the hole in > the pin -- by several mm -- and is then bent back around the pin making its removal quite > difficult.) When I pointed out that if the string was simply inserted into the hole and > made flush with the other end the string would still be held quite securely, I was told > that in the rush of production they couldn't be sure that the stringer would get the > string all the way to the end of the hole unless they had this visual aid. Apparently, at > one time in the companies history, one or two had come loose. It also made pulling the > coils up tight somewhat easier since there were now two mechanical stops; one on each side > of the pin. > > This practice was -- and still is, I think -- restricted to the vertical pianos only. > Apparently the grand stringers are able to figure out where the end of the hole is all on > their own. When I was down in Arkansas last year, I found that the verticals were machine coiled, hence the bend on the becket (spelled correctly, the other is a playwright) and the grands (different factory) were hand-coiled, with no extra bend. In all the re-stringing I have done (I have the thumb-scar to prove), I have found beckets are pretty tough to slip, if no lubricants have been introduced (by this, I mean the practice of spraying WD-40 on rusted tuning pins to make them look less oxidized). > When destringing one of these pianos the "coil-breaker" tools don't work very well. They > get hung up on the bent-over end. I even tried getting in there with a modified cold > chisel. In the end, I found it was often easier to simply cut the wire as close to the pin > as possible and back the whole mess out together. Pin, coil and everything. Yes, well, as 0> I said, it's a mess. It was just a bit less bad than the alternatives. I removed two bass strings from a Baldwin 243 (Hamilton) today, and using a large, flat-bladed screwdriver, was successful in snapping off the extra bend in the becket and removing the coil intact. > -- ddf > > ------------------------ > > > Del, I enjoyed your classes at Banff, and look forward to more meetings in the future, Regards, Rob Kiddell, Registered Piano Technician, PTG atonal@planet.eon.net "Server's poor response Not quick enough for browser Time out, Plum Blossom" -Netscape haiku error message
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