David,
Since this thread is dominated by Daves, I might as well jump in
I think you meant "flange bushings" rather than key bushings...?
One of the first things I ever learned from this list was from Don Mannino of Kawai--don't use Protek on Kawai action flanges.? It doesn't help, and can hurt.? My take on that one is that the abs/carbon parts won't allow the moisture out of the bushing, and can in fact cause the problem to get worse.
As I contract for a Kawai dealer, I'm familiar with the actions and the materials.? I've had very occasional tightness in flanges.?? The only solution is to ream and repin, for the aforementioned reasons(lubes don't work).? In the case of your new Kawai upright, I suspect that this will be a one-off situation.? I would guess that 20.5s will work.? One of the advantages of this material is its strength.? It won't crack if a bigger pin is necessary.
That's been my experience, but I live in a far more piano-benign climate than you do.? Talk to Mark at Kawai.? The company policy with stuff like this is quite fair.
Hope this helps a little,
Dave Stahl, RPT
Dave Stahl Piano Service
dstahlpiano at sbcglobal.net
dstahlpiano.net
-----Original Message-----
From: David Renaud <drjazzca at yahoo.ca>
To: Pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 8:29 am
Subject: [pianotech] Kawai parts follow up
If I had found this, the first thing I would do - before fixing - would be to
call Kawai.
dp
David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu
------------------------------------------------------
.......Yes, your right....I should reveal what I did first while thinking about
how to proceed ..... here was my immediate response.
Fist when I found this, on site, I called a peer I respect with more
experience. He had also seen something similar and did call kawi. He was told by
Kawi that the key bushings were likely getting loose and that was causing
stress on the flanges and in turn causing the birds eyes to enlarge. He did not
get anywhere on dealing with this issue. That left
me both because of this and a former experience wanting to get more
information and support before calling Kawi.
Secondly, I tried to see if we could get the dealer to call Kawi
as that would might have more weight. The client purchased the piano
out of town from Montreal, not from the local Kawai dealer. The piano
dealer, because she from another distant city shopping for a better price
they gave her the better price, but with limits on follow up service and
responsibility. The client did not want me following up with the dealer.
Thirdly, I determined that I want to talk to Kawai myself, but only after
gathering more feedback.
I don't want to be told with some authority that this is the key bushings
fault or some other silly excuse for a young piano requiring #22.5 pins.
I was hoping there would be some common experience dealing with this.
There are relatively new parts and perhaps now finally enough people have shared
this experience for it to be taken seriously. I would like to go to
kawi with a expectation that this is an anomaly, or that there is a real problem
to address here.
A fourth footnote is I did deal with Kawi once on a grand action
problem and action parts. Very low friction in flanges is desired by them.
This was making problems as it leaves very little margin for error. They
approved repining hammer flanges. I did, an although the piano was better
this advanced Russian concert artist thought it still needed more. This was
followed up by another technician resulted in going yet further
and needing to repin wippen flanges as well. The result was they sent
in there own technician and replaced all the action parts.
I left feeling like I was out of the loop insomuch as I never was left
with a sense of what caused the problem, what I should really do about it,
will this be a recurring theme, what was the explanation, and what could
I learn from this. The whole issue of extremely low friction flanges as
policy is other discussion I would like to have............
This time I want to go to kawi with more assurance of what is wrong and
what to do about it.
David Renaud
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