piano bench repairs

[Thomas D. Seay, III]

>We have 450 pianos at BYU and 100 of them are in the dorms, so we do
>a lot of bench repair.  As you know, the corner brackets get bent and
>that corner piece gets broken off, and after the brackets are
>straightened they aren't as strong, and sometimes I can't find the
>right size replacement brackets from supply houses.
>
>But I found that the bench that comes with the Yamaha P22 has a very
>heavy bracket in that hard to find size.  I ordered two dozen from
>Yamaha and it took a month to get them, but they are a good
>replacement unit.

One reason for the type of damage you report is that the hanger bolts are
often slightly stripped out in the leg, usually as a result of
overtightening the nut on the end of the hanger bolt. The more you tighten,
the more it pulls out of the leg until, finally, the entire bench
collapses. Also,  the wood used in piano bench manufacture is of a, shall
we say,  lesser quality  (some type of hybrid balsa, I think) and won't
hold up under any kind of heavy institutional use. Anyway, your idea about
new brackets sounds like a good workaround for this particular problem.