James Repairing the pin block separation is the easy part. John Ross gave you a good explination on how to do this. But before I do the repair, I would inspect the plate very closely. From the description you gave of the action being hard to take out, and the pitch dropping like it did, it sounds like the plate cracked. If that is indeed the case, there is nothing you can do, nor was there anything you did that caused it. The piano is a total loss. I had this happen on a Hamilton many years ago. The piano was in a school, and the music teacher complained that the piano would not stay in tune very long. When I got to it, not only was it about 25 cents low, but the tuning was all over the place. When I got done with the tuning, I used the damper pedal while I was playing, and I heard a click. Upon close insepction, the click was a couple of the damper levers hitting the plate. I thought for a moment, and said to myself. "There are only two reason why the dampers would be hitting the plate, either the action is closer to the plate, or the plate is closer to the action". Sure enough, I looked, and there was a crack in the middle of the plate, right behind the keybed. I immediately went to the school office, and told them that the piano needed to be moved out of the building ASAP, because it was about to explode, and that if there were any children near that piano, they could get seriosly hurt. Now, as most of you probably know, in normal school situations, to get something done usually takes two or three weeks. The piano was gone in less than an hour. Wim -----Original Message----- From: James Sasso <jwsasso at gmail.com> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Mon, Feb 7, 2011 9:25 am Subject: [pianotech] Exploding Piano Hi Everyone; A few weeks ago I had a service call to tune a Baldwin Acrosonic console for New Year's Eve festivities at a new customer's home. Before starting tuning I noticed a modest amount of "gained motion" i.e. the hammers in the middle third of the piano were slightly lifted off the rail, with the biggest offenders at about 1/8th inch from resting positon in the middle of the piano. "Strange" I thought, usually this is the area where we find lost motion. I tuned the piano and found that the dampers were in need of adjustments in the same area so I tweaked a few but found they were all over the place with regard to regulation. I quickly adjusted the gained motion and finished tuning the piano. I had a laser I purchased from a recent PTG seminar with me so I decided to pull the action to check out the dampers. The laser indicated that they were all over the place when compared to a straight line. About 2 minutes into checking the dampers I hear a loud bang and crack; then 5 seconds later another bang and crack. Seems that the action, which although screwed directly into the plate (no action bolts) yet came out with the greatest difficulty, was the only thing holding the pin block in place to the frame. Now before my eyes, was a rip straight across the felt that covers the top of the pinblock and a half inch gap between the pinblock and frame. In addition the "explosion" had been so quick that two cracks had formed in the soundboard. I couldn't get the action back into the piano at first but luckily it had tuning pins that served as the action base so I had to adjust those to be able to get the machine screws to align. The laser indicated the action had been warped and twisted from all the pressure upon it. The tuning had dropped a full step (i.e. 2 half-steps) and the customer had tuned her harp to A440. The piano was unplayable with some hammers actually touching the strings. I called in the customer and we assessed the situation. The guests would be coming in about 3 hours so there was no time to go back to get the epoxy, clamps, drills and myriad other items needed for the repair, let alone retune and reregulate the piano. I've gone through the past 12 years of the archives on this website and searched all pinblock issues and found much information and advice on how to repair this type of situation. My records indicated I'd done 6 complete pinblock repairs on my player pianos in my shop so this post isn't a rehash of all that. It's just that this "explosion" never happened on my watch. The repairs I'd done were either preemptive on player pianos that were beginning to separate or on players that had already separated but on which I'd deemed the value as worth the repairs. So I was shocked and embarrassed that early detection of this separation had eluded me. I'd found the same situation in a Baldwin studio upright literally 2 houses down from where the aforementioned incident occurred and the customers were thrilled with trading that piano in for a beautiful Yamaha upright. However, that Baldwin had no felt covering the top of the pinblock so it was easier to see the beginning of the rift. Two days after the incident I had to tune another Baldwin Acrosonic in the area, a spinet a half-step flat. A strip of felt also covered this pinblock.This time I took no chances--I pulled up the felt and sure enough--the pinblock was separating from the frame in the middle of the piano. So here's where I need some feedback from this group: (Especially from Wim & Susan) I feel that I overreacted. I didn't put down the piano, per se, but I emphasized all the negative things that could happen with a repair, such as pinblock or plate cracking and failure to get the crack totally closed (almost a given). I estimated 6 hours of repair work, which is far too high (This is not a job I like to do) yet I want to try to repair my reputation if there was anything I did wrong. The woman was more than gracious and insisted on paying me for my time. But privately they may be questioning my actions. My questions to the list are "Is there any recourse in dealing with Baldwin (Probably not; I called Gibson and nothing was divulged about pinblock problems)?; and what are some options for remedying the situation? Should I eat some or all of the repair work? Offer a discount? Jim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110207/8ee0ca50/attachment.htm>
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