Benches

[Susan Kline]

Actually, I think I missed that post of James Grebe, though
I saw one where he described replacing the floor of a piano.

I know that benches are stronger if the bottoms are kept
tacked in.

Tonight I have another trouble -- a bench with hanger bolts
which are threaded into metal "cross dowels" of pretty good size
(5/16" bolts), and one of the cross dowels is missing, besides
the bolt for it having mashed threads in the portion intended
to be inside the leg. So far, the hardware store only has little
tiny cross dowels.

This seems to be a little bench from a Young Chang console, but
it doesn't seem to be in metric, at least.

Does anyone have a good source for bench hardware?

Thanks.

Susan

P.S. If I can't find replacement hardware, I'm considering expoxying
in a maple dowel, and then drilling a pilot hole through it, and going
with the standard hanger bolt which has wood screw threads. Still
sounds precarious. If benches didn't cost so damned much, I might be
tempted to toss little ones like this. It also has two split sides,
but I'll use the carriage bolts and epoxy to fix those up okay.


>>Susan,
>>
>>Did you ever see James Grebe's description of replacing
>>the bench bottom to strengthen the benches? It seems like,
>>done correctly, it would be almost impossible for the
>>bench to break again. Even under university student use. :-)
>>I have one in the process but it got put on the back burner
>>temporarily.
>>
>>Let me know if you'd like to have it.
>>
>>Avery
>>
>>>And some little details (like benches hell-bent on "auto-destruction") have
>>>been neglected for long enough that people notice that something is getting
>>>done.
>>>
>>>Susan Kline
>>>Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon
>>
>>I've been doing some catching-up in the bench repair dept., and would be 
>>interested in better ways of doing, since I'm just gluing and rescrewing, 
>>then setting the tender prey back into the lions' den.
>>So please, if you could give reference parameters for James Grebe's 
>>article, I'd appreciate it.
>>
>>---------------------------------
>>Lawrence Becker, RPT
>>Piano Technician
>>College-Conservatory of Music
>>University of Cincinnati
>>----------------------------------