[pianotech] Re-pinning

[Terry Farrell]

HOOOORAY for Wim! For being one of the few techs who is willing to  
share a realistic time estimate for restinging (repinning) a piano for  
the first time. The first time I strung a piano took me 20 hours. I  
think your estimate is right in the ballpark.

That having been said, I've also been on a cruise ship where two guys  
restrung (new pins) a Yamaha C3 in three hours. Nice job too. I wish I  
could tell you how they did it, but I couldn't see much because they  
were moving so fast.....

Terry Farrell

On Oct 28, 2010, at 6:11 PM, tnrwim at aol.com wrote:

> Paul
>
> A long time ago there was a new Samick grand at a dealer with loose  
> pins. They opted to have me repin the piano. But that was Samick.  
> I'm surprised that Schimmel would opt for that solution.
>
> The reason the pins are loose is because during the drilling process  
> at the factory, the bit became dull, which caused the sides of the  
> hole to burnish. So when you replace the pins, you will need to ream  
> out the holes, or at least brush them clean with a 22 caliber rifle  
> bore cleaner. Do 6 notes at a time. As was suggested, you need to  
> make sure you keep the string separated. Release the tension one  
> turn, then remove the beckets for six notes, and then remove the  
> pins with a drill. I would go with one size larger pins, and pound  
> them in leaving enough room to turn them 2 turns after replacing the  
> beckets. .
>
> You want to do this in your shop. You don't want to take all your  
> tools to a customer's home, and you don't want to have them seeing  
> your mistakes, which you will make the first two hours of doing this  
> work. Since this is your first time doing an entire piano, I would  
> plan on three days of work, including retuning the piano 4 times in  
> your shop. You will also need to charge Schimmel to tune the piano  
> in the customers home 4 times over a period of sixe months. You  
> might also wind up breaking a few beckets, so that will also have to  
> be dealt with later on.
>
> Good luck. You'll gain a lot of experience with this, so it's nice  
> to have someone pay for your learning a new job.
>
> Wim
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: paul bruesch <paul at bruesch.net>
> To: Pianotech List <pianotech at ptg.org>
> Sent: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 8:14 am
> Subject: [pianotech] Re-pinning
>
> I have a customer with a quite new (3-4 years old) Schimmel K120, a  
> nice ~47" Studio. Nice, except that virtually all the tuning pins  
> are barely tight enough to hold pitch, which of course makes it  
> unpleasant to tune.
>
> I am in contact with Schimmel about this. They want to send me a set  
> of oversize pins. I suppose anything would be an improvement, but I  
> have a few apprehensions/questions/concerns...
>
> (1) I've never re-strung, nor re-pinned, an entire piano. I have  
> replaced single pins here and there, and a dozen or two on an  
> instrument (an S&S "B" that should have been getting rebuilt  
> instead). On the dozen-or-two piano, I had a heck of a time tuning  
> up to pitch when I replaced both pins of one wire. Should I replace  
> one at a time? i.e. pull one pin, (ream/chase... see #2,) replace  
> with new, pull up to pitch, pull other pin, lather rinse repeat?  
> Seems like an incredible amount of tool-changing.
>
> (2) There's been much discussion on this list about reaming  
> (chasing) for new pins on a restringing job, and about PDF/resin for  
> driving the new pins. Any opinions as far as either of these topics  
> for repinning a nearly-new piano?
>
> (3) For removing the old pins, would backing them out with a power  
> drill generate too much heat? The alternative, manually backing out  
> 200+ pins, seems like an incredible time suck.
>
> (4) How much time should I plan on, particularly given this is my  
> first experience??
>
> (5) Would the results be significantly better than CA'ing the block,  
> and worth the effort? I do think that CA'ing a nearly new block  
> sounds like a sacrilege!
>
> I do have a tilter which I would think I definitely want to use.
>
> Thanks much,
> Paul Bruesch
> Stillwater, MN
>

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