Can't comment on that. I did purchase the entire system from him along with some milled wood for the inserts-enough for a few sets-and I will probably purchase additional wood from him in the future as it's cheaper to buy it for me than take the time to shop for the stock, jig up and mill it myself. Whether I will actually use all the pilots is unclear but it's nice to have the set just in case I suppose. I appreciate Ralph designing the system and offering it up for sale. The really essential part of the system is the cutter which is designed to receive the pilot and the perfectly matching plug cutter which is designed to receive the drill bit indexed to exactly the same position as the pilot. How many pilots you actually need is a question mark if you use the system as I prefer to use it. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Sowers Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 3:17 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: [pianotech] Onesti Balance hole repair system I emailed Ralph Onesti and he didn't seem to get what I was talking about with not needing all the extra pilots. He doesn't seem to want to sell the tool without all of them. I tried to clarify so I'll see what his response. is. This leads me to wonder about using the Schaff tool that I have using David Love's method with gluing the punchings on the bottom of the keys. The cutter I have works pretty well, its the little fiber inserts that are a pain in the #$*!?@! That system would work much better if the inserts were made of maple or some other hardwood. I was reading that lemon wood is a great material for this because it is naturally lubricious. (I love that word!). I'm going to try making some inserts that will work with my Schaff tool and see how that works. I'll have to see if I have a plug cutter that is the right size. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081220/403ab63f/attachment.html>
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