[CAUT] center pinning changes

[John Delacour]

At 12:39 -0400 8/9/07, Ted Sambell wrote:

>...one continually runs into pianos one hundred years old in which 
>the centers are still perfect. They used no lubricants, but 
>evidently took the time to do things properly.

Quite so -- or almost.  I have just been recentring the hammers of a 
Kirkman upright from about 1870 which has had by no means a charmed 
life and which most people would have taken to the dump.  The pins 
were original at 1.18 mm and not one of them was either loose or 
unacceptably stiff.  I recentred throughout with 1.20 mm German 
silver centre wire.  Today I have inspected the centres of an 1895 
piano with an Isermann action.  Since this piano has had very light 
use and  is virtually as good as new, I shall probably not even 
re-centre but use Protek, since most of the centres here are also 
perfect.  It is a real pleasure to work on old actions from the great 
makers.

>Renner do wonderful work, so it is mystifying why they should have 
>this problem.

I also have recently acquired a 1905 Lipp with a Renner action 
(rather unusually, since at the time they generally used Keller.  I 
very rarely find a Renner action in an old piano and there is nothing 
very special about it, and certainly not the centres.  If they did 
such wonderful work then, it's surprising so few makers recognised 
it!  I don't regard their work now as wonderful either.  The really 
great German and French action makers are long gone, together with 
dozens of mediocre makers.

>I just use a little teflon powder on my fingers when handling 
>centerpins. In the old days we were taught to run the pins through 
>our hair before inserting them. Of course, back then people washed 
>their hair once a week. so it was a good source of lanolin. I think 
>graphite is unnecessary, and  messy stuff anyway.

I have better things to do than wash my hair every day and never do 
centring jobs until about 3 or 4 days after washing it, since this is 
the very best way to get just the right amount of lubrication on the 
pin and ease the passage of the pin through the wood, without which 
either it will creak and seize or require so much pressure as to risk 
bending the pin, and it is remarkable how many bent pins one 
discovers when decentring original work.  If a centring job simply 
must be done when my hair is newly washed, then I wipe the pins on a 
rag steeped in tallow.

JD