[pianotech] Hurricane salvage

[tnrwim at aol.com]

Some time ago I had an idea of starting a piano salvage company. Basically take apart old pianos that are destined for landfills and dissembling them for the part, as you describe. But after thinking it through, with the limited number of piano tuners around the country, buy the time I paid someone to do most of the work, cataloging all the parts, paying storage, taxes, etc, it wasn't going to be very profitable. Yes, one person taking on three or four pianos, and keeping the parts, might be worth it, but at some point there needs to be a return on the investment. And it just didn't seem to work. 

When I first started in the business my dad gave me four of five boxes of old upright parts he had salvaged. But when i started using them, they would break, or not quite fit. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was cheaper in the long run to buy a new replacement part, than to spend the time redoing the same repair over and over, until one of the parts actually worked. 

 
Wim



-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org>; ptg_pianotechne <ptg_pianotechne at egroups.ptg.org>; ptg_cautne <ptg_cautne at egroups.ptg.org>
Sent: Sat, Nov 10, 2012 7:16 am
Subject: [pianotech] Hurricane salvage



I talked to my pal (and hero) Isaac Sadigursky for a while last night, 
and he pointed out something he thought ought to be mentioned on the 
list. Isaac is an even worse, but much better organized pack rat them I 
am, though we've been packing rats for about the same amount of time. 
Anyway, his observation was that a whole lot of otherwise unobtainable 
and still quite usable piano parts are about to find themselves in 
landfills in the northeast as water damaged pianos are condemned and 
disposed of. Lid props and music desks, hinges, action brackets, 
sostenutos, lyre sticks and pedals, nose bolt nuts, shift levers and 
such, and a half ton of brass in agraffes alone, are on their way to 
extinction. So for any of you up in that area who will be dealing with 
the piano side of that mess, this could be a good chance to archive some 
rare and increasingly more difficult to get parts.

Ron N

 
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