Dean, A very sad story, but in my option many mistakes made here. First, a lesson learned here. NEVER do any work for nothing. It tells the customer what you think your time is worth. Secondly, I would have contacted the supplier directly to find out what they have to say about what happened. Thirdly, you should have let her take you to court. You could have represented yourself and the court would always give you the opportunity to rectify the problem before there were any fines or cost to you and the supplier would have to appear in court to prove that the keys were in fact ruined. Sorry this happened to you. Just my 2 cents. Al Guecia From: Dean May Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 3:28 PM To: 'Pianotech List' Subject: [pianotech] gluing on sharps Greetings all A few months ago I posted a problem I had with a new set of sharps I installed that had several coming off. I received several helpful hints on things I could do differently, but the basic protocol was: get clean surface, use PVC-E glue, which is what I had done. The situation is now resolved and I wanted to share what I found to be the problem. To wit, the new sharps from Schaff come with a very shiny glue surface, unlike sharps from the past that were rough giving the glue something to bite. These new sharps from Schaff need to have the bottom side sanded first with something like a 150 sandpaper to provide a suitable gluing surface. In keeping with the axiom of no good deed will go unpunished, this sharp replacement job was an extra freebie that I had done on this piano in conjunction with some other work and it turned into a nightmare. Originally I had agreed to shoot some lacquer on the original sharps to spruce them up at no charge. But they had some kind of coating on them that, even after extensive sanding, made the new paint a gummy mess. So I told the customer I would install new ones at no charge. To complicate things the customer lives about 45 miles from me. After installing the action the customer was very happy. On returning home I had a call from a very distraught customer that the sharps were coming off, I had ruined her piano, and she insisted I return immediately. Because of other commitments it was not possible for me to return for a few days. In the meantime she contacted a respected piano supplier many on this list use. This supplier told her (I am getting this second hand, of course, and not directly from the supplier) that her keys were ruined, but not to worry they could make a new set for her for around $2k. The customer did not want me to touch her piano and contacted her attorney. She wanted me to pay for a new set of keys from this supplier. It ended up, long story short, I hired another mutually agreed upon rebuilder who replaced the sharps. He verified that the keys were not ruined and also spotted the original problem of shiney glue surface. In 25 years this is a first for me, having a problem that I was not able to resolve directly with the customer. What is particularly bothersome, however, is what I would deem the very unprofessional conduct of this piano parts supplier, giving a sight unseen diagnosis over the phone with no prior knowledge of the circumstances. Their conduct has cost me several hundred dollars and a lot of goodwill. How do you all think I should respond? Dean Dean May cell 812.239.3359 PianoRebuilders.com 812.235.5272 Terre Haute IN 47802 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081112/d2fcce22/attachment.html>
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