Pinblock Repair.

[jpiesik@arinc.com]

I restrung a George Steck, 1919, 5 ft grand with a split in the pinblock that
ran through the middle of the laminations (5 ply block) parallel to the
length of the pinblock.  In other words, the split (most likely due to
humidity, and not visible until the plate was removed), affected several
tuning pin holes, and ran a length of about 1/3 of the block.  The pins,
surprisingly, were very consistent in tightness, in and out of the split area
of the pinblock.

Anyways, I too used wood glue to repair the split.  Except I squeezed in the
glue from the side edge of the split, worked it in as far as I could get it
with feeler guages, and then clamped the split shut with massive C-clamps.  I
wish I had thought of using a baby-booger sucker (as we had a baby at the
time) to suck out the unwanted glue squeeze.  I can deal with sucking out
unwanted glue, but I could never deal with sucking out unwanted baby boogers
- left that job to my wife, and she actually enjoyed it, getting every last
bit of booger!

The repair worked.

John Piesik, RPT


Questions: Is the piano already torn down to the bare plate? Can you better
describe the crack? The reason is this: I once had a small Kawai baby grand
in which the bottom laminations had come apart (apparantly from some idiot
who attempted to solve the "loose-pin-itis condition by DRIVING the pins to
the hilt without support) and since this was a dealer piano (i.e.save me some
money) kind of thing I tried this and it worked well. With the piano torn
down (no strings or pins) I taped off the bottom of the pin-block with duct
tape (I suppose heavy masking tape would work) to cover all the holes in that
section, then forced wood glue down into all the holes of the affected area,
then with a laminated pin block support (APSCO or SCHAFF has it) placed
underneath the area SOWLY & GRADUALLY raise it so as to squeeze the
lamination back into place. This could get messy because the glue will
obviously be under pressure and ooze out. Just be prepared with a lot of
paper towels or damp rags. I hope by now you've figured out that the pinblock
support has become a huge clamp!. After getting everything set where it ought
to be (close as possible to where it was origionally) just clean up the
excess glue, maybe take a suction device (like a rubber baby-booger sucker-if
you have kids you know what I'm talking about) and suck out as much glue from
the tuning pin holes as you can, then let it dry for a couple days or more if
you can wait that long. Then remove the support, drill out all the holes in
the area at least one size over and re-string. This sounds like a lot of work
but the actual time it took for me was about 3 hrs. (not including drying
time and re-stringing, of course!) I have shared this with a few other
technicians and at first they thought it was crazy, but, hey, It Worked! The
piano was finished and turned out rather nice.
Good Luck!