Inconsistent front rail pin size.

[Porritt, David]

Andrew:

I'm going to guess that this is a fairly new NY S&S with (nominally)
0.125" front rail pins.  They do vary.  Apparently the supplier for this
size pins is not very consistent.  I just got a 7/8 keyboard for the
school and the black keys have 0.125" pins and the white keys 0.146".  I
asked David why he used different sizes and he said that the blacks on
the 7/8 keys are so narrow that the .125s leave more wood for the
mortise but that the .125 pins he could get were so inconsistent that he
didn't want to use them on the whites.  A local S&S tech told me that
this is what they are getting on the new pianos now and that they do
vary a lot!

dave

David M. Porritt
dporritt at smu.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew and Rebeca Anderson
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 10:58 AM
To: Pianotech List
Subject: Inconsistent front rail pin size.

I'm looking at rebushing keys on a piano and I'm up against pin 
sizing inconsistencies.  The center rail pin size was consistent on 
the few samples I checked.  The front rail pin size varied 5 
thousandths when checking just six pins.  Is this type of 
inconsistency typical for front rail pins or would I be saving myself 
a lot of grief by replacing all of them?

Andrew Anderson