Ron Nossaman wrote: > Let's give this a little time before we start printing up the bumper > stickers. It's been well known for a long time that a reluctant screw can > be heated to make it turn more easily in wood to let you remove it with > less chance of twisting it apart. It's reasonable to assume the same thing > would work with a tuning pin, but there's a little more to consider. I > don't see that heating the pin enough for this to work could possibly > damage the string without trashing the block, so as long as it's done just > enough to get the effect, that shouldn't be a problem. I tried this technique on some pins on a MOCKBA (Moskow) piano in Cuba last February. The pins were so tight and the quality of the pin metal so poor that they were shearing off at the becket as they were tuned. Couldn't even get them out with a pin extractor, so I tried the heating method. The only way I got results was to get them hot enough to weaken (break) the wire. In this case it was worth it when nothing else worked, but I found that the wire, being closer to the source of heat application, got hotter than the other end of the pin, in the block. If the technique is at all effective on the pins, I would be concerned about weakening the wire. Paul S. Larudee, RPT Richmond, CA
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