Tuning pin drilling?

[Ron Nossaman]

> Most of the setups that I've seen for drilling in the piano require a long bit and a mobile drill press, both of which, to
> my mind, introduce  inconsistencies which would be incompatible with the unforgiveness of the 
> full thickness Delignit.

I know of at least a couple of rigs, built from my basic 
design, using new drill presses, that seem to work enough 
better than the previously used method(s) that they haven't 
gone back to the old way. For what it's worth, the uniformity 
seems to come more from the double drilling, than from the bit 
delivery system.


> Sounds like previously you were able to use the full thickness Delignit.  Why did you switch to the composite?

I wanted the top of the block support of granite (Delignit), 
with the forgiving nature of a less dense block. I also wanted 
different friction characteristics at the bottom of the pin, 
than Delignit is capable of.


> Another reason I'm going after the full thickness delignit is cost. Its one  of the least expensive block materials, but an excellent block material...the only caveat being that you must deal with the inconsistency issue. The multilam/delignit composite is attractive, but as you have to purchase multilam and delignit as well as perform secondary operations to create the composite some of the efficiency of drilling in the piano is absorbed by the cost of making the composite. 

Yes, there is time involved, but not a whole lot. I resaw one 
Delignit block into three and plane them to 9mm each. So a 
$110 1-1/2" single block makes three caps at $37 each plus 
time. A single 1-1/4" multilam is $75. A double is $141, and 
will occasionally yield three blocks. Not often, but it 
happens. So the difference in cost is essentially time and 
epoxy to laminate the cap to the block. For the drilling ease, 
the uniformity of results, and the marvelous tuning feel, it's 
no contest for me. It's worth the extra time and epoxy, for 
which I charge a moderately higher price than for Delignit. My 
costs are covered, and I think the product is far better.

Ron N