I have learned the hard way that sometimes it is best to just walk away. Cut your losses and write it off. The downside, of course, is that occasionally the obnoxious and/or unreasonable customer comes to their senses-usually after trying everybody else in town-decides to be somewhat more reasonable and you end up finishing the job anyway. If this happens it's a good time to rethink that estimate. ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 620 South Tower Avenue Centralia, Washington 98531 USA del at fandrichpiano.com ddfandrich at gmail.com Phone 360.736.7563 From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of tnrwim at aol.com Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 6:35 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Sohmer scale I'm going back in March. (Remember, this is on another island, and it costs about $150 to fly round trip). I charged him $500 for the work I did over the weekend. He complained that since I made a mistake, he wants some of that money back. I explained that because he destroyed the scale, I did the best I could. I will talk to him about spending the extra money to rescale the piano. But don't hold your breath. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Terry Farrell <mfarrel2 at tampabay.rr.com> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Thu, Jan 6, 2011 3:49 pm Subject: Re: [pianotech] Sohmer scale Awwwwwe, jeezzzzz Wim, you really have yourself a situation there. Wow! I'd sure have Ron N or Del F make you up a new scale. They know what they are doing and won't break your bank. Then just go to it - bit by bit - or however it will work for you. With the owner working that close with the project, it sounds like a disaster in the making - BUT, I do have to admit that a couple/few really fun times I've had putting a piano together was with the owner. If s/he is tolerant and good natured, perhaps you can make a few bucks, make a piano much better than it was, and have a dog-gone good time doing it! I hope so. Let us know what shakes out. Terry Farrell On Jan 6, 2011, at 7:20 PM, tnrwim at aol.com wrote: Here is the situation with this Sohmer. It's on the island of Kauai, which had a major hurricane go over it in 1992. The piano was soaked, and then sat for 15 years in a cabinet shop. 6 years ago my client bought the piano for $100 and put it in his living room with the intension of rebuilding it himself, but he soon realized that he was in over his head. Then he suffered a major injury, and nothing was done until this spring, when he called me and I inspected the piano. I gave a bid for $5000 to put on new strings, pin block, etc., and shipping the piano to Oahu. He rejected that bid. Against my better judgment, I agreed to restring the piano in his living room over a period of time. So in September I went there and took off a bunch of the strings in the high treble. There was a scale on the plate, and I told him that is what I needed to restring the piano. But when I got there on Monday to put strings back on, (he had bought strings from Schaff,) he very proudly showed me how he had refinished the plate and soundboard, (a good job), but covering up the stringing scale numbers. He at least did write some things down, but they didn't make any sense, so I had to invent a scale. I started with the first treble strings, and because some of the strings he bought were rusty, (that's another story), I skipped a few notes, but when I got to the end of the middle treble, I ran out of hitch pins. So I recounted, and checked, but couldn't figure out what went wrong. So I thought I would start from scratch, and get a scale, and start over. What is surprising, is that after 20 years, and with the kind of water damage that the piano suffered, the pin block is tight, there are no cracks in the soundboard or bridges, and the action is a great shape, considering the age. The guy has refinished the case, more or less, and it's starting to look like a respectable instrument. No, if I can only get all the strings on, I think it will turn out OK. Wim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110106/b199be55/attachment.htm>
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