Before you roll up your eyes, hear me out on this. Here in Hawaii we have a lot of trouble with expanding keys leads. When I was in St. Louis, and even in Alabaman, over a period of 30 years, I had maybe 2 or 3 pianos with expanding keys leads. I've been in Hawaii a little over 3 years, and I've treated at least 30 pianos with expanding keys leads. Some are corroded so bad that the lead has disintegrated. On others, they not only push out on the side where the lead is exposed, the leads even push the wood out. This, obviously is creating a lot of problems. Up to now, as had been recommended by several other tuners, I've chiseled off the leads, and sealed them with Shellac. For the most part this has worked, except that a few weeks ago I got a call from someone whose leads I trimmed three years ago, and some of the damn things are corroding again. This morning I tuned a nice Charles Walters, and several keys were sticking, with, guess what, expanding leads. I told the customer the problem, and as I was explaining that even if I replaced the leads with new ones, there was nothing that could be done to keep them from expanding, too. You have to know that this is a real crazy thing. On the same piano, some of the leads will corrode, while others will show no corrosion, at all. Presuming that all the leads used in each piano come from the same lead maker, why would some leads corrode, and others not. Then all of a sudden a light went on. The leads in the keys expand, and rub against the neighboring keys. But what if I take out the lead in the key, and attach a jiffy lead on top of the key? Even if they expand, they wouldn't rub against a neighboring keys, but if it does get too big, the jiffy lead can be taken off very easily, and replaced. Obviously, it needs to be done with some care, weighing each key, and putting the lead exactly where it needs to go, and not just put on nilly willy, like some techs do, to make the key work. Each lead could even be trimmed, to more closely match what is in the key now. Am I missing something here, or does this sound like a viable and respectable repair? Wim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101113/4deed752/attachment.htm>
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