List, A few weeks ago I wrote to the list about a Steinway grand that had been refinished and restrung, but had had no bridge repair done. It had many false beats, and was virtually untuneable. At the request of the customer, I had asked the list if anyone would use larger bridge pins than the original. (I had recommended the epoxy repair, but the rebuilders had suggested oversize pins.) Friday afternoon and Saturday were spent in the repair of this piano. This was my first epoxy repair of this magnitude, so it was kinda neat getting to do all of it. :-) I did epoxy repair on the treble bridge except for the section under the overstrung bass, to which I applied thin CA glue to save a little on time since I had been working almost non-stop for 7 hours on detensioning and epoxying the upper treble part. I wanted to re-tension the following day--it was 8:30 p.m.--and CA seemed the best solution considering all factors. The repair worked very well, except for the very top section, just past the last strut. (I think I had not put enough epoxy into the holes on a few. This is where I began, and I realized this error soon, so this mistake was not made in the rest of the bridge. I will remedy this later with CA.) Two main questions have emerged, which follow. One is bridge related, and the other is related to tuning pin height. 1) I had ordered 1" pins, planning to tap them in a touch further than the original, then file to proper height. However, the pins were already 1" so I put in extra epoxy. After putting enough epoxy into the holes, I noticed that as I tapped the new pins into the epoxy-filled hole, the previously tapped adjacent pin came up as its neighbor was being tapped in. I assumed that there were pretty sizable gaps in the bases of the holes, which allowed the epoxy to "travel" over to the neighboring hole. Is this normal, and is that what was happening? Since 1" pins were what I replaced, had this bridge seen repair before??? Would that have caused the gap/trough at the bottom? 2) When retensioning the strings, I noticed that the bottom of the coils on the tuning pins in the capo section were anywhere from 6 - 1.1 mm from the plate. While tuning, the pins that section were flagpoling and/or "springy," making it hard to get the string into a stable position. I did the best I could, knowing that the tuning was not going to last anyway. I wondered if the pin height was a little too high--wouldn't that cause the flagpoling? Reblitz suggests an average coil height of 5mm above the plate. I am thinking of suggesting to the customer that I drive the pins to 4-5mm from the plate. This should cause the string to have a little more friction on the upper part of the plate and might make for an easier and more stable tuning. What are your thoughts? Any tips or suggestions about things I left out would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. John Formsma Blue Mountain, MS
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