Broken tuning pin removal

[Avery Todd]

Ted,

   Below are a couple of possibilities that I saved from a previous
discussion about this last January.
   Hope it helps and good luck.

Avery

>While tuning a spinet last week a tuning pin broke at the becket hole
>leaving most of the pin exposed.  I thought it would be a simple task to
>turn the pin out of the hole and hammer in a new one, but such was not the
>case.  The tuning pins on this piano are super tight and I couldn't budge
>the broken pin with vise grips.  So I sawed the becket deeper and tried a
>big screwdriver with no success.  Can anyone suggest a tool or a method
>that will get this tuning pin out?
>
>Ted Simmons
>Merritt Island, FL

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In conjunction with any of the proper methods for pin removal, consider
reducing the pin torque with heat. You have a lot of pin on which to put
an extractor tip. Put on the extractor tip tightly, then heat it with a
torch for a few seconds and try backing it out. ( Use a tiny torch or
very tiny tip, sideways, just hitting the tip of the extractor, protecting
everything around the pin.  In my shop it would be possible to use an
acetylene outfit with a jewelry welding torch tip directly on the pin stub.
It puts out a flame only 1/16" long)   Alternatively, you could heat the
tip of a punch to red hot, -and I actually do mean red hot, because
transfer of heat will not be that good anyway, then press it onto the tip
of the pin for a few seconds, then extract. With a hot punch you do not
need to shield anything around the pin. High heat, fast, should heat the
one pin sufficiently without affecting its neighbors, whereas slow heating
with a soldering gun may make a whole area hot, and doesn't work very well
anyway.

Consider worst case scenario. You fall asleep and inadvertantly heat the pin
until it chars the few thousandths of an inch of pinblock around itself,
then it practically falls out.  Simply drill out the wood to the diameter of
the hole in the plate,  plug the hole with pinblock material, epoxied in,
and redrill for a new pin.

Just a thought, or two.

Bill Simon

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What if you took a Dremel moto tool or similar tool with a small diameter
metal grinding bit and shaped the stub so you could fit either a square tuning
tip or one of the old oval shaped tips for english pianos of "pre-historic"
vintage? Might be easier. Just an idea.

Regards,
Greg Torres
tunapiana@adisfwb.com