[pianotech] Exploding Piano

[Barbara Richmond]

Hi Jim, 

I dealt with a Baldwin Hamilton that had a broken plate. The complaint from the teacher was that the dampers didn't work well--and maybe there were other action complaints--it was a long time ago. I had a look. Eventually I saw that the strut between the tenor and treble sections was broken. I guess the action (which I did not remove) was actually keeping the plate from busting out further or that's as far as it was going to break--anyway the plate was up against the action bracket (I think). Whatever the case, there was nothing for me to do. 

Barbara Richmond, RPT 
near Peoria, Illinois 


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Sasso" <jwsasso at gmail.com> 
To: pianotech at ptg.org 
Sent: Monday, February 7, 2011 1:25:41 PM 
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. 



Jim
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