Lesson learned.....

[Susan Kline]

At 09:59 AM 9/23/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>It makes sense, but don't we have to turn the piano on it's back to do 
>this?   If I've brought in my tipper and turned it over I'd probably just 
>go ahead and do them all ...I'd just give it a drop...but then I've never 
>actually done this....not many loose tuning pins in my neck of the 
>woods...(where does that expression come from?)
>
>David I.

I'm not sure why woods have necks, come to think of it. Not many here, 
either, thank heavens, but we get our share of refugees from the South, 
Midwest, etc. Usually the boards are miserable, as well, cracked and flat 
as pancakes. Lucky pianos were sent to the West Coast or the high desert 
when they were young and limber ...

I assumed that I needed to tilt an upright, back when I first began this 
three or four years ago. I had a doozer -- a very old Zimmerman brought 
over from Denmark, with maybe about twenty very loose pins, some extremely 
bad. I tilted it, and I marked the worst offenders, and carefully worked on 
them. For the worst one of all, in the tenor, I removed the coil and turned 
the tuning pin all the way out. I swabbed the hole with CA on a 
pipe-cleaner, then rolled the pin into some CA and carefully turned it back 
in. No way was I going to pound on that block! The next-worst two or three 
(still very bad) I took off the coils and turned the pin half-way out. I 
dripped CA onto the exposed threads, turned the pins back in, replaced the 
coils, waited five minutes and pulled them up. The other dozen+ I simply 
dropped a few drops into the seam without removing or retuning anything. I 
waited awhile, checked to be sure there weren't any puddles, and untilted 
the piano.

The worst one, which I had removed, was jumpy. The other two or three, 
half-removed, were jumpy, but not as bad as the first one. The rest were 
tunable, with varying degrees of looseness.

I came back in a couple of months -- some more had slipped. Added a little 
more glue to a few of the first offenders (still marked with chalk), not 
many, and treated the new ones. I was lazy. I didn't tilt, though I thought 
the glue might not get in without tilting. It seemed to work fine. 
Apparently the cracks were still able to slurp up enough glue to make a 
difference. I just put a towel under the pin I was treating, to soak up any 
excess before it got to the upper termination and the dampers. Afterwards, 
I stopped using even that much, and just had a towel handy to dab up 
anything which dripped downward from the hole.

Then I was "lazy" on several other pianos, and didn't tilt. Seemed to work 
fine ... it's not like I ENJOY tilting a great hunking upright, anyway.

Susan