On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Daniel Carlton <carltonpiano at sbcglobal.net>wrote: > I'm old school and use the vice grip at the top of the old elbow as a > "stop" for the new elbow. > *This is a good idea, as long as the new elbows are the same dimensions as > the new ones. Loosening the wooden dowels definitely helps! * > * > * > *...I much prefer to do this job on my bench, especially that last one!!* > *I just break the old elbows, remove the stickers, lay them all out on > the unfinished side of the bottom panel of the piano that I've laid out on > the customer's floor, and go to work right at the piano. (that is, if > they're all breakable; check first so you don't crack any of the whippens > trying to break the old elbows. DAMHIK.)* > > > Daniel Carlton > > > > > > > > Hi Daniel, I don't need to loosen the dowels, you missed the point, the point of turning the elbows(new plastic ones) onto the wire where you've locked your vicegrips as a stop to indicate where the old plastic one was, is to REDUCE the amount of adjustment of those dowels when you re-install the action. The new elbows are the same size as the old ones, AMHIK I think I said I would love to be able to do that sit under the piano as others do but at 6'4" and roughly 285lbs crouching under a spinet piano when it isn't absolutely necessary isn't in my list of things I prefer to do. I guess I failed to mention I have a foolproof method of removing drop actions without having to remove the keys. Several years ago I was doing a similar repair on a Kimball, the replacement of the square rubber grommets on a Kimball spinet, another of my least favorite jobs! I spent at least an hour explaining that she would be far better off replacing the piano but she stubbornly insisted she wanted to keep it. When I was preparing to remove the action she was observing so I explained that I would need to remove all of the keys, use some of her discarded newspaper to cover the balance rail pins and remove the action. I explained that I had tried various devices to hold the wire stickers forward but to no avail. She walked over to a counter/bar across the room and pulled out several long colored very heavyduty rubber bands about 12 to 15" long and asked if they might be of use? By stretching one from the bass end to the tenor treble action bracket and one from the treble end to the tenor/bass action bracket and tucking the stickers forward between the backchecks I was able to remove it without removing a single key. Home Depot sells those bands in the cleaning supplies aisle. They're made for fitting around large 30, 40 or 50 gallon trash barrels to keep the plastic bags in place. They cost about 2 or 3 dollars for a bag of 4 or 5. I loaned mine to a friend who forgot to return them and needing a set stopped at Home Depot, they don't have the rubber band type any more, they are more like a small bungee cord now, still connected at the ends, just looking more like the cloth covered bungees than rubber bands. Mike -- I intend to live forever. So far, so good. Steven Wright Michael Magness Magness Piano Service 608-786-4404 www.IFixPianos.com email mike at ifixpianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090208/21bd8228/attachment.html>
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