Loose pins

[Ron Nossaman]

>   I am a relatively new piano tuner looking to find the best way to deal
>with loose pins, if there's only one or two on the instrument.  My course
>manual states that a trick that can be used is inserting a toothpick in
>the hole along with the pin, yet I don't want to try this until I know it
>works and doesn't do more harm than good.  What are your experiences with
>this?
>
>-Fritz William Herrick

Back when the earth was young and I was doing sub-subcontract tuning for
university practice pianos, I occasionally used slivers cut from woodwind
reeds as shims for the occasional loose pin. The reeds are bamboo, which
means they are harder than toothpicks, and obtaining one was as easy as
pulling the piano (vertical) away from the wall and taking my pick from
among the discards resting between the backposts. I didn't see anything
particularly wrong with it then, and I still don't. Just about anything you
can do to make a loose pin hold without causing any other obvious
functional problems is justifiable modification in the grander scheme of
things. These days, I carry 100 grit (or so) abrasive cloth for such
things. The only reason I don't still use discarded reeds is that the
abrasive cloth is at hand, so I don't have to rely on finding something
between the back posts, and I can be reasonably assured that the cloth
hasn't been licked by Typhoid Mary. 

Ron N