Greetings, Ok, so I took it in a weak moment, but it is on the bench and I gotta deal with it. A local jazz musician, completely disgusted with the sound of electric keyboards on jazz gigs, went looking for an easily portable acoustic piano. He found it on Ebay. It is a 1910 Cramer "Ship piano". Five octaves, fold-out keyboard, weighs about 150 pounds. 67 bass strings in bichords and a few strung notes on top. Oh, did I mention the bird cage? Anyhow, the ribs were almost completely separated from the board, the board was separated from most of the back, and the posts were loose at the sides and bottom. The bridges were also easily popped off once the strings were removed. I got all that stuff reglued, and will be putting the soundboard back in tomorrow. The block is the last real task to deal with. The block comprises the upper portion of the sounding assembly and there was no way to remove it without completely destroying the piano and starting from scratch. The piano was strung with atypical tuning pins, (at least, in my experience). They are .250" diameter and only 2 inches long. These are smaller than any piano pins I know of, and larger than the zither/harpsichord pins. The dainty little plate doesn't encourage me to drill the holes out to accomodate the 1/0 pins, and they are all too long,anyhow. I can only imagine re-using the originals. There was marginal torque on quite a few of them prior to disassembly, so I want to treat the block before driving them back. I have, against all my "traditional" training, become a fan of CA glue in the treatment of loose pins, but I wonder if I can't do something a little more extreme with this block. I know that some of you have used the West System epoxy in block repair, and would like to know what your technique is. The block is a solid beech beam with two very thin laminations on top. Any ideas? Thanks, Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC