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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>Diane,</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>Sometimes in removing the old strings I have missed
1 or 2 beckets. When I used my drill to remove the tuning pins, the beckets did
not break and the wire wound around the tuning pin in reverse and then snapped.
It was very scary. When that happens there is a good chance of
breaking the agraff or the string doing some damage to you or the piano when it
snaps</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=3>Al Guecia</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title="mailto:dianepianotuner@msn.com CTRL + Click to follow link"
href="mailto:dianepianotuner@msn.com">Diane Hofstetter</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, July 05, 2008 3:53 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=pianotech@ptg.org
href="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Becket breaker?</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Am I slow, or what? <BR> <BR> For 30 years now I
have been carefully breaking the beckets and then extracting the tuning pins
from the block using an electric drill.<BR>Today I was having problems
getting the wire to break at the beckets and was getting frustrated.
<BR> <BR>Since I had just purchased a new drill, I sat down to learn about
it and get my mind off those durned beckets. I finished assembling the
drill and decided to try it out on some of the pins where I thought I had
succeded in breaking the wire at the beckets.<BR> <BR>A couple of pins came
out nicely and the new drill felt great in my hands (much lighter than the old
one). Then, on to the next pin and zing! snap! the becket broke while I
was taking the pin out!<BR> <BR>So I tried it on another pin--it snapped
the wire at the becket as I was pulling the pin out! So I removed all the
treble wire that way, after looking closely at the stringing pattern and trying
to remove pins in a pattern that generally had a pin immediately to the left of
the one that I was removing, thus giving the wire something to hit
against.<BR> <BR>Have I been wasting all that time breaking beckets all
these years? Does everybody else simply break the beckets at
the same time as taking the pins out? <BR><BR><BR>Diane
Hofstetter<BR></BODY></HTML>