<DIV>You are going to have to fill that gap.  A less messy way to do it than using a liquid filler is to first lower the tension slightly (maybe a quarter of a turn on each tuning pin) and then tap maple wedges every two or three inches along that plate flange gap.  Restoring the tension will tighten up those wedges. Christopher Purdy <purdy@ohio.edu> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">I ran into a new one the other day. A local dealer has pianos made for them by Dong Bei in China. I was asked to make a service call on a small grand that was sold to a church. This was my first encounter with one of these pianos. The local tuner was having trouble with tuning stability and they asked me to have a go at it. Overall, it looked fairly well built and pin torque was very consistent. String rendering had a mushy feel to it but I was able to set pins. It seemed stable while I tuned and sounded like a million bucks when I was finished. The other tuner had told the dealer that the piano was going out of tune even while he was working on it so I was very meticulous with my tuning and was looking everywhere for an answer. Then I found something that blew me away. I checked the pin block fit and found that the block does not even touch the flange, at any point. Not only could I put a business card in the gap, bass to treble, but there was a huge gap. I could have put the thickness of three or four cards in it with no problem. The previous tuner had just tuned the piano eight days before and when I got there the treble was a good 25 cents sharp. I do not know this tuner so I can't speculate about his experience. I asked a ton of questions about humidity and temperature fluctuations and I gather that it has been pretty stable. They do not turn off the heat during the week, etc. I am going back this week to check my tuning. I can't imagine it's going to be stable with no attempt whatsoever at pin block fitting. Have any of you seen anything like this? I know there is a lot of griping about the pianos coming out of China but the rest of the piano really looked fairly well made. The piano is named Steinhauer and is made exclusively for this dealer. I would be very interested in hearing any experiences you may have had like this. If I go back there and my tuning is FUBAR I am going to have to condemn this bird. I have a good relationship with this dealer but I smell trouble. Mitch, have you dealt with any of these yet? Chris _______________________________________________ caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> Vince Mrykalo RPT University of Utah <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=31637/*http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/">Try our new resources site!</a>