<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><div>Paul, it might not just be pushing the piano around that causes this: as I have seen, of late, MANY examples of lids being opened (even by piano performance majors, I suspect!) WITHOUT folding back the front portion first! (And, in many cases, even then letting the front portion sit on top of the music desk!) So, as ridiculous as it may sound, perhaps a diagram showing how to properly open a grand piano lid should be placed in all practice rooms? (Along with an explanation of why it is important to wash one's hands right before playing, why not to pluck the strings with one's hands, and etc....) Hey! Perhaps I'll print these up myself, and offer them for sale to all music schools, teachers, and others in tidy, small frames!)<br /><br />Thumpe</div></td></tr></table> <div id="_origMsg_">
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span>
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Susan Kline <skline@peak.org>; <br>
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<span style="font-weight:bold:">To:</span>
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<pianotech@ptg.org>; <br>
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<span style="font-weight:bold:">Subject:</span>
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Re: [pianotech] Filling screw holes <br>
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">Sent:</span>
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Thu, Dec 20, 2012 5:19:20 PM <br>
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<font face="Courier New, Courier, monospace">Find some fairly hard
buckskin. Cut it into tiny strips, with a little point <br>
on the ends. Test one in a hole, and cut it off the blunt end so it is
the right <br>
length to fill the hole but not protrude. Get it back out, soak it with
white <br>
glue, put it back in, replace the screw while the white glue is still
wet, <br>
making sure you aren't just pushing the leather ahead of the screw. On
those <br>
little long hinge holes I sometimes put the tip of the Elmer's bottle
into <br>
the hole and give it a little squeeze, once the leather is already in.
Wipe <br>
away any glue which oozes out after you've tightened the screw. It
doesn't <br>
have to be totally tight when you screw it in, just so long as it
resists <br>
overturning at least a little bit -- it will firm up more later after
the <br>
glue sets. White glue never seizes screws, like CA glue sometimes does.
<br>
<br>
The white glue stops the splintering in the hole, so the screw threads
don't <br>
turn the wood to sawdust anymore. The leather is soft when wet and
conforms <br>
to the screw threads. Then it gets hard when it dries, essentially
making <br>
new screw threads in the hole.<br>
<br>
I use this tactic on all stripped screw holes, from tiny slivers of
leather for <br>
the long hinge all the way to big thick strips of shoe leather for lyre
holes. <br>
I never put in longer or fatter screws. The trouble isn't that the
screws are <br>
too small, it is that the holes have gotten too big. Also, you want all
screws <br>
to match each other if possible. And if you can get the old ones to
work, you <br>
don't need to supply new ones.<br>
<br>
I got this idea from Jeff Hickey, who talked on pianotech about
repairing <br>
stripped Steinway rail screw holes. Any mistakes are mine, not his ...
but this <br>
idea has worked out very well for me. <br>
<br>
Susan Kline<br>
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<a rel="nofollow" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" ymailto="mailto:paulmulik@yahoo.com" target="_blank" href="javascript:return">paulmulik@yahoo.com</a> wrote:
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<pre>A school that I tune for has a Kawai grand, and about a third of the little screws from the long hinge (connecting the front lid to the main lid) have fallen out. I've told them repeatedly that if they need to move the piano around the room they must not push on the lid (I even left a note to the lid warning against it), and of course they have ignored this advice.
In the past I tried replacing them with slightly longer screws but those have fallen out too. Obviously I need to fill the holes with something, I guess using a syringe, but what? Epoxy? Wood filler? Thick CA?
Thanks,
Paul Mulik
Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone</pre>
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