Rippon piano--plastic action

[C. Mike Swendsen]

At 02:15 PM 5/7/96 -0600, you wrote:
>One of my customers has a Rippon piano made in Ireland with an all plastic
>action.
Gary:
The Rippen piano of that era used a plastic flange assembly that snapped
into the metal rail (in a normal piano action it would be the main action
rail, in the keys it would be the balance rail.  the plastic flange in the
key has a small steel spring which causes the key to return.  When the key
comes loose is can be because of two problems.  Either the spring has broken
in half or the plastic flange has had a lip break off and is no longer held
in the  metal rail.  The springs are hard to find, they must be ordered from
Rippen in Holland, if they still have them.  The plastic flange may be glued
in place using epoxy or with some of the new cryo' glues.
There were a number of adjustments on the keys which made them easy to
assemble and there is a screw at the back and bottom of the key that is used
for leveling the keys.  The pianos were orriginally shipped with the keybed
turned vertical and the keys all bent in the middle, after putting the
keybed down the keys were glued into the position that was needed to fit the
front rail pins and the tail end of the key correctly under the whippen
section.  The keys also had plastic front rail "bushings ".
The whippen section was built out of alluminum with a plastic jack assembly.
The hammer butt was plastic but the hammer shank was wood and there was a
normal hammer on top.  The glue joint between the plastic butt and the
hammer shank often caused problems because the glue joint would often
release. ( The glue was usually something like  pliobond.)
The piano had a very nice full sound and held tune very well, the frame was
made of welded steel and had the same coefficient of expansion as the piano
wire, so tmeperature changes didn't cause the piano to go out of tune very
much (it just changed the pitch). The piano was very light (about 250 lbs.)
My brother-in-law  and I carried on into a house once and danced around the
living room still carrying it.  I remember seeing advertisements of the
piano being played under water. It seems that all of the centre pins turned
in plastic and wouldn't swell or shrink and so they wouldn't stick.  I can't
imagine what all the water would do to the felt hammers though.

We sold about 4 of these pianos in the Calgary area during the '60s and
immediately had to buy most of them back.  One owner thaogh refused to sell
it back, he loved it.  We had to order about 100 of the springs, but I think
I gave them all to one customer who had purchased one of these pianos from
someone else.  They might have some left, but I know she has no extra
plastic flanges.

Hope this was of some help.
C. Mike Swendsen R.P.T.
Calgary, Alberta
Canada