CA glue

[Alan]

Thanks for the summary. I DID forgot, once, to remove or cover a grand
action ... The stuff hit the action right on the hammer flanges of this
rather nice little Steinway! Had to disassemble, scrape clean, and
rebush 3 of them. Not a fun job to do for free.

Alan R. Barnard
Salem, MO


-----Original Message-----
From: Dean May [mailto:DeanMay@PianoRebuilders.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 12:51 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: RE: CA glue


I had one tech email me privately to get more specifics on how to treat
tuning pins with CA glue. Perhaps it would benefit others on the list as
well, so I am going to it repost here.

Use thin glue. Don't use accelerator. You want the glue to soak into the
wood with deep penetration. The accelerator would cause it to set
prematurely. My theory is that the glue swells the wood and then sets
up. When you give the pin its initial turn after treatment, you will
find there is not much glue left in the joint to bond the pin to the
wood. It snaps loose pretty easily. It is increased pressure from the
pin block that tightens the pin and this is exactly what we want.

Fill a hypo oiler with the glue which should be about 2 oz. Lay the
piano on its back. Apply glue to base of pin very much like you would
apply the old pin tightener. I squeeze the bottle for 1/2 to 3/4 of
second at each pin. Go through all pins twice. You should end up with
about 1/4 of the bottle left. Don't use more than one bottle. That would
be overkill. It just doesn't take as much glue as you think it should.
This glue has tremendous capillary action. Put a couple of drops on the
end of a small dowel rod and watch it wick up the grain.

The glue has such positive capillary action that you really don't even
need to lay the piano down. (It is more convenient and a little safer to
lay it
down.) To apply vertically, just put the tip of the hypo oiler at the
top of the pin at the base and squeeze out a little glue. The trick is
to stop squeezing before the glue starts running down the plate. Have
some Q-tips handy to mop up any excess that does run down the plate, or
it will go on down the strings onto the damper felt. Ask me how I know.
You should lay the piano down if you have time. But there have been
unusual circumstances where I wanted to fix the piano without charging
the customer full price. A most recent one was a customer who had
already paid for a regular pin treatment several years ago. The pin
treatment wasn't holding up very well (it had already been treated
several times before me) so I put the glue on. They had already paid me
for a pin treatment (Pin-Tite, not CA) to solve the problem several
years ago. Plus, they were a regular customer so I wanted to "warranty"
my work, even though there was not an express warranty given (in fact,
with the Pin-Tite treatments I used to always expressly indicate that
there was NO warranty that it would work). Since I wasn't getting paid
and didn't have much time, I didn't lay it down. It still worked great,
and this was a pretty pervasive case of rotten pin block.

If you are doing a grand be sure to put newspaper between the pin block
and the action, though I've never had any glue make it to the newspaper
like I have with regular Pin-Tite. You could also remove the action,
flip the piano upside down and apply the glue to the bottom of the hole.
But that really isn't necessary.

Let it sit for about 20 minutes. When you use that much glue without
accelerator it takes awhile to cure. 20 minutes usually gives enough
time for the pins to be tight enough to hold, but you really don't need
to wait. If a pin isn't tight enough to hold, just go on and tune the
others. It will be tight enough when you are done with the rest of the
piano. I have found them to be even tighter after several days. I have
had one or two problem pins that didn't tighten enough. I removed them,
squirted glue directly into the hole and immediately re-inserted the
pin. Worked beautifully.

I charge the equivalent of about 3 tunings for this 30 minute procedure
and give it an 8 year warranty, and I'm thinking about raising my price
another $50. The 8 year warranty is a value added service that justifies
the expense and really sells it for the customer. Every customer who has
purchased this work has been very happy about the price. I just did one
yesterday for a church. They are thrilled. They still know that the
piano needs rebuilt or replaced. They just don't have the money to do
that, but they do have $200-300 to pay for a guarantee that they can
make it 8 more years with the piano they have. Remember they aren't
paying for the 30 minute service; they are paying for the value added
guarantee. And you are saving them thousands of dollars to get them
through 8 more years.

I personally haven't been treating pins this way for more than 4 years.
But other techs I've talked to have ten plus years experience with it
and they indicate it still works very well. Worst case scenario is that
you might have a piano with 3-4 very problem child pins. If that
happens, pull out last resort tricks: pull pin and squirt glue in hole,
use oversize pins, use fiberglass resin, or very last resort, drill it
out and plug it. Very worst case scenario I could refund their money.
But generally I could nurse any piano along for a few more years even
before I had the CA glue trick. Now I am even more confident that I can
get them through another 8 years with the CA glue.

As I've said before, I like Kwick Kleen (www.kwickkleen.com) brand of
CA. It is always fresh. You can call to order with a credit card at
(888) 222-9767. I'd recommend a half dozen bottles of thin, one bottle
of medium and an 8 oz bottle of accelerator for a start up order. And be
sure to get a dozen hypo oilers from Schaff. Some guys like to use
syringes. I like hypo oilers. Whatever you use, the tips will plug
eventually, so get plenty of them. I peel the label off an empty glue
bottle and put it on the hypo oiler so I know what is in there (doesn't
everyone have a dozen hypos on their bench with various unknown fluids
in them?). When the tip plugs I just change tips and throw the new hypo
bottle away. Wish I could buy just the tips somewhere.

Blessings to all,

Dean

Dean May             cell 812.239.3359
PianoRebuilders.com   812.235.5272
Terre Haute IN  47802


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