[pianotech] Old Upright Blues

[Barbara Richmond]

Hi Tom, 

Some have removed the pins, swabbed CA in the hole and put the pins (or minimally bigger) back in. Of course, a few strings might break in the process... 

Barbara Richmond, RPT 
near Peoria, Illinois 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Cole" <tcole at cruzio.com> 
To: pianotech at ptg.org 
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 8:49:01 PM 
Subject: [pianotech] Old Upright Blues 

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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