Upright pinblock question

[John Ross]

See if you can close the gap with clamps.
If you can, then it needs bolts through to the back for stability.
If you can't close the gap, then you would probably be ok with epoxy.
John M. Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada
jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: pianolover 88 
  To: PIANOTECH at PTG.ORG 
  Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2007 11:07 PM
  Subject: Upright pinblock question


  Recently acquired an amazingly well preserved Kohler & Campbell art case console made in 1969. To look at it, you would think that it could have been made yesterday!  It has never been played, thus the hammers are unmarked after almost 40 years! Even the wooden wedge was still screwed in securing the big panel (some call it the kick panel?) above the pedals! 

  Anyway, the pitch was (not surprisingly) grossly flat--close to 140 cents at A4! I checked all the plate bolts and they were 90% snug, needing maybe 1/8 turn to totally snug them back down. The tuning pins were found to be all uniformly tight, and responded beautifully to minute, incremental adjustments. The pitch came right up to A440 after the first pass, and after letting it settle for a while I gave it its first tuning in nearly four decades. 

  I followed that with two more fine tunings to make it as solid as possible for the time being. Ok, now to get to the main reason for my post; There is, what appears to be a separation, not really a crack but a perfectly clean separation at least 2-3' behind  the pinblock laminations, that runs the entire width of the pinblock. 

  As I stated the pins are uniformly tight, the laminations sound, and the plate bolts tight. Also, I wanted to know the depth of the separation, which ranges from maybe 1/2-1 millimeter wide at the very most, so I used a very thin piece of steel and found that it was only about 1/4'-1/2' deep. Should this flaw be cause for concern, or is it likely not going to affect the stability? The tuning seems to be holding, but then I just finished it maybe an hour ago so... 

  Would it maybe help to 'fill' this crevice with thin west systems epoxy, until it fills the area, then just let it dry and move on, or would that just be a waste of time and epoxy? Or maybe Gap filling CA? Of course, it would take quite a of CA to fill a 56' long, 1/2' deep cevice! Thoughts and advice would be appreciated! 

  PS: See the pics.

  Terry Peterson

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