[CAUT] center pinning changes

[John Ross]

Coming from Scotland, I remember the Saturday night bath. :-)
I now shower every day, a habit from my time in the Navy.
So my repinning, now involves, Protek, or Goose Juice.
John M. Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada
jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Delacour" <JD at Pianomaker.co.uk>
To: "College and University Technicians" <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2007 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] center pinning changes


> 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
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