Frozen Pianos (was Re: S&S B #496639)

[Tim Keenan & Rebecca Counts]

Also sprach Horace Greeley :
>
> Dear Guy,
>
> Just how frozen is frozen?
> I can't speak on the subject of frozen Steinways, but I have seen several
old uprights that have been frozen solid (at least 0 F. /-20 C.) annually
for years.  These are instruments that people keep at their summer
cottages, and they seem to stay in tune from one year to the next at
least as well as those in "normal" Great Lakes region houses.  They do
not seem to suffer many of the common problems associated with being kept
in buildings which are heated in the winter.  I can't say for certain
that the finish isn't damaged, because I don't know their history,  but I
see no good reason why it should be, unless it has a high water content
to start with.  I recently had occasion to try out a piano at -10 C which
I had tuned at a coolish room temperature a few months before, and aside
from being a couple of beats sharp, it was in pretty good tune--much
better than it would have been with a 30% change in R.H., anyway.  I
would suspect that the rate of cooling would be more of an issue than the
temperature per se in terms of the likelihood of damage.

Tim Keenan
Noteworthy Piano Service
Kitchener, ON.