On Mon, 26 Jan 2015 19:40:16 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jan 2015 15:49:12 -0500, micky
wrote:

On Mon, 26 Jan 2015 05:32:38 -0800 (PST), TimR
wrote:

Just for info:

Pianos are tuned by twisting a steel pin that sits in a wood board.

Old pianos sometimes have the holes enlarged, or have small splits in the wood, and won't hold a tune, the pins will untwist under the tension of the string.

One cure is to remove the pins, redrill the holes, and install bigger pins.

Because of all the snipping and because I don't read Subject lines, only
now I see -- a little too late -- that pianos are not the topic of the
thread, but since I wrote this all, I'll post it for those of you with
pianos.

I'm 99% sure you don't always need to redrill the hole. I'm 99% sure
that in college, I replaced one pin with a larger one without any
drilling. Indeed the piano repairman at the Kimball Piano Company** who
gave me the peg didn't say anything about redrilling. I guess the new
pin was just a little bit bigger than the old. (I know I had no drill
and I didn't drill anything. The only other possibility is that I just
tapped the old pin in harder.) Whatever I did, it worked at least
until I left Chicago 5 years later.

The tuning pins come in 7 sizes, spanning a total of .030" from SH1 to
SH7, so you DEFINITELY do not drill the tuning block!!

That's what I thought.

I'm also right that there are piano parts for sale online, duh**

I don't know if one should use them or not but one of them was metal
tuning pin bushings.

"Easy to install. Solves the problem of loose tuning pins. Push
bushings into the hole up to the shoulder, and then drive tuning pin in.
The outer surface of the bushing is embossed to insure firm hold on pin
block. One bushing is equal to two sizes larger tuning pin."

http://www.howardpianoindustries.com...-pin-bushings/


The cheapest tuning hammer they have is 40 dollars, but my vague
recollection is that I paid 10 or 20 dollars 49 years ago. So it's
actually cheaper now than it was then, plus then I think I was paying
50% of wholesale. (Unless of course $5 then seemed like 40 now, but
I don't think so.)

The page for bushings also has a video. Haven't looked at it yet, but
there might be other videos.

Caution: Story from here until the end.
A long time ago I took a bike trip from Wilson North Carolina to NYC
with two friends. We were supposed to ride in the morning and evening
and sightsee during the heat of the day, but we never sight-saw. When I
found out it was 100 degrees, I bowed out. I was almost to Virginai but
I decided to hitchhike back to DC and take the train from there. My
last ride of the day was a guy with a Mohawk haircut, who told me he'd
been in prison, who said he was unemployed, had to move from the house
he was in because they had no money, and who had "I found it" stickers
all over his dashboard and kitchen. I took my bike and went to eat at
a fast food place but I accepted his offer to stay there that night. I
even took a shower and imagined the curtain would open at any minute to
a guy with a butcher knife.

After the shower he said, "I've got a book you might be interested in."
I thought, "Here it comes. He's going to try to get me to join some
imitation-Mohawk religion or something." He brought me the book and it
was "How to repair pianos." We had not discussed pianos at all, but he
was right, I was very interested. This was a few years after repairing
the fraternity's piano in Chicago


Never attempt to turn a tuning pin with anythong other than a tuning
key, or you will end up replacing tuning pins.


You can accurately tune a piano with an application on your smart
phone - but an "accurately tuned" piano does not sound right. There is
a "flavour" I think they call it, to a piano that requires at least
some of the strings to be slightly off theoretical tune to sound
right.



BTW, the guys at Kimball gave me felt, hammers, some wooden parts I
don't remember the name of, the tuning pin, the piano wire (I had to
make a second trip after learning the harp size) and maybe a little
more. Every guy gave me something. Maybe they were happy to get an
interested visitor.

And they are probably who told me to call Lyon and Healy (another brand
of piano, and iirc the only place in Chicago that refurbished keyboards
themselves..)