Second guessing methanol

[Ron Nossaman]

At 03:33 PM 7/2/99 EDT, you wrote:
>Greetings all, 
>    I was asked to deal with a chronic problem on a 1998 Steinway L.  
>"Sticking keys". 
>    The cause was excessively tight hammer flange centers.  Being a 
>warranty-eligible problem, I wanted to stay within their recommendation, so I 
>called and was told to put one drop of methanol on each center and leave 
>totally untouched for 24 hours.   I did, and the hammers are once again 
>swinging as they should.  
>    Now,  I KNOW that if I had repinned this hammerline, I would have had no 
>further problems, (at least so far imhe).  However,  the ease of the liquid 
>diet has a lot going for it, and if the result is equally durable, it is a 
>no-brainer.  There were two prior visits by the dealer's techs, so it is 
>possible that the methanol was already tried, and if so, I will be repinning 
>this thing later.  
>    Who on the list has experience of using this straight methanol on the new 
>Steinway's pinning?
>Thanks, 
>Ed Foote 
>(and I always wondered what they denatured alcohol with,  it is this stuff! 
>poison!)
>
>


Hi Ed,
A while back, I did the same thing to a new S&S L, only I used cheap vodka.
The stuff was probably still poisonous, but not as bad as methanol, and I
force dried it with a hair dryer. Worked just fine. I did this last winter
when the house humidity was in the high 30%'s, and it's been in the mid
60%'s for the last month in this part of the world/swamp. Since I haven't
got the call (yet?) I assume it's still doing OK. I've used methanol for
this in the past, with good results, but the cheap vodka works just as well
and is a lot safer. Doesn't smell as bad either and there isn't a storage
problem. You can always drink what's left over. The long term results seem
to be pretty positively dependable (in the ACTION), oddly enough (easy fixes
are ALWAYS suspect), since I don't recall ever getting a call back on a
center shrink job. Of course, that could reflect more on the state of my
memory than the dependability of the fix (possibly from left over cheap
vodka???? Nah!). 

Anyway, somewhere in the above paragraph is an opinion of sorts, and a
reporting of the requested experience. I hope that answers your question,
because I don't think I could do that again. 

   
 Ron