Today's piano was a learning experience, a Melville Clark upright from 1902. It started out, months ago, as a conversation with a do-it-your-self-er who wanted me to fix his keyboard by regluing a few ivories. He had "rebuilt" the action and just wanted me to supply and attach some ivory heads. He lived way up in the mountains so volunteered to bring the keys to my shop. Sounds easy enough but there was more to the story and I didn't bother to think through or ask what I might ultimately be getting myself into. I did ask about what was done in this alleged rebuild and found out that, besides replacing the bridal tapes and bass dampers, he vacuumed out the keybed (yes, including the punchings). Oh, and he wanted me to replace the back rail cloth. Okay, fine, and today I brought the necessary materials along with the recovered keys. To get started, I had Mr. Doityourselfer install new balance rail punchings while I fixed some brass rail problems. Then I sent him to his office so I could glue in the backrail cloth and ease and space the keys. No key leveling or dip yet because I've never tuned this thing, this free piano from across the street. Let's see if it's tunable now that it has keys. I found 7 pins in the mid section which would not hold a pitch even though their coils had been driven into the exposed pin block and several more that were very loose but holding. I recommended restringing but this was out of the question. The customer was philosophical about the outcome and after collecting the check, we parted on a friendly note. I told him I would give it some thought and get back to him. Personally, I'm not in favor of putting oversize pins on 109-year-old strings and I don't see how super glue on the loose pins would work if the coils are hard against the pin block. If you were in this situation, what would you do? Tom Cole
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