Since no one has mentioned any of the benefits of the traditional pinblock restorers, I would share a few observations. I have used Garfield's for several decades. First, I always explain that the best choice for many pianos is complete restringing and will gladly give a quote or referral for more thorough job. Glycerin is the main active ingredient in either Lunsford's or Garfield's. I have heard that this is used to preserve wood in some woodworking applications. I have used CA glue on many tuning pins over the years also. If the pinblock has not already been treated, I find better results with Garfield's. It is a much more time consuming job the way it was taught to me. I don't remember by whom. For any of the liquid treatments, removing or protecting the action is vital; you won't like CA glue any better than glycerin and alcohol in the action parts. For traditional liquid treatment, I set up three appointments. The first to clean and apply one half of a bottle, diluted as per instructions (the alcohol is the vehicle that carries the other stuff into the wood, then it dries.) A week later, the second application of the second half bottle goes in. Two weeks later the piano should be ready to tune. If you carefully apply it with a syringe tip, it really doesn't make a mess. Is it a wonderful feeling pinblock to tune? No, but the pins will hold the tension and that feels way better that trying to tune pins that won't hold. The pin tightness normally improves over the next year or two. If the traditional treatments fail, CA glue added later gives a better feel and tightness than either do by themselves. This is my number one reason, there is a fallback method aside form rebuilding or replacing the piano. On the two or three pianos I have used CA glue in after someone had long ago used Lunsford's or Garfield's, the results were excellent. If you start, using only CA glue, after one treatment with CA glue, nothing more seams to help. I would rather repin a block that had CA glue in it than the glycerin stuff, but I would want to replace or plug the pinblock in either case. Bruce Dornfeld, RPT bdornfeld at earthlink.net North Shore Chapter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090324/f6b36fe2/attachment.html>
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