Wow! As the contestants would say on some game show, "good idea, good idea!" Joy! Elwood Rev. Elwood Doss, Jr., M.M.E., RPT Piano Technician/Technical Director Department of Music 145 Fine Arts Building University of Tennessee at Martin Martin, TN 38238 Office: 731/8811852 Fax: 731/881-7415 -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron Nossaman Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 10:21 AM To: Pianotech; Caut at ptg.org Subject: [CAUT] Getting a leg up People being moved in from out of state, movers lost control of the Baldwin console on the ramp and it took brief but impressive flight. Result: both legs broken. I got the call and made the repair. The plan was to pull the legs apart, drill for a reinforcement rod, and epoxy the mess back together using the break for alignment. Hah! Baldwin had, apparently realizing the "break here" nature of the way too narrow profile at the top of the leg, had embedded a 3/8" threaded mild steel rod in the leg there. Swell idea. It didn't add anything in strength, but it kept the legs from falling clear off when they did break. Maybe that was the intention, in which case it worked great! Having to twist the legs off naturally trashed the nice clean breaks I originally had to look at, so I went to plan B. A 1/2" threaded rod, to try to insure that the entire sides of the case would be broken off before the legs would break again, a couple of inches of McMaster-Carr brass tubing to hide and disguise the nasty looking joint and provide a wider leverage base for increased strength, and twice the epoxy and wood flour mix the thing would hole (mopping up the overflow), did the trick. No touch up whatsoever required, and a resulting stronger joint than I had originally planned. The two turned steps on either side of the joint are the same diameter, so I could have gone with larger diameter tubing to fit them and gotten an even more solid joint (full of MORE epoxy), but I thought it would look too clunky. Not that this is all that beautiful, but it is relatively unobtrusive and looks to me like it might have been intentional rather than a patch. For what it's worth to anyone interested. Ron N
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