[pianotech] Steinway permafrozen 2 felt

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Don,

At 08:17 PM 10/29/2011, you wrote:
>I've had good luck with reaming and repinning.  The couple of pianos I've
>done that on have held up well.

Using those reamers you developed this is quite possible.

Traditional reamers tear up the cloth, which is woven more loosely 
and with thicker threads than traditional bushing cloth.  The end 
result is unstable and will have to be resulted.  Depending on how 
much material has been removed from the bushing cloth, the parts will 
have to be rebushed.  Burnishing carefully is the real "trick"; also, 
use only the pre-cut, burnished/polished center pins from 
S&S.  Anything else will tear the felt.

Without getting into parts replacement, the other option is to 
disassemble whichever parts/centers are problematic, insert center 
pins of the same diameter that is already fit to the birdseye into 
the bushings, and then soak the bushings in toluene for several 
hours.  Toluene works more quickly than other possible carriers for 
the teflon flakes that were originally soaked into the bushing 
cloth.  Careful fitting of the "sizing" pins will limit the amount of 
burnishing that needs to be done.

Depending on the age of the instrument, various sizes of teflon 
flakes and types of bushing cloth were tried as the process was 
developed.  Some have turned out to work better than others.

Thanks again for those reaming/burnishing tools.

Kind regards.

Horace



>Don Mannino
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
>Of David Love
>Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 5:11 PM
>To: pianotech at ptg.org
>Subject: [pianotech] Steinway permafrozen 2 felt
>
>Has anyone found a good way to deal with the constant seizing problems
>associated with permafree (that's a laugh) 2 felt on Steinway flanges.
>WAPITA.  I'll let you guess.
>
>David Love
>www.davidlovepianos.com