In a message dated 11/10/98 4:31:17 PM Central Standard Time, fcahill@erols.com writes: << Even my thinest screwdriver didn't help much. Needless to say, the coil was BAD, BAD, BAD! Has any one developed some sort of tool or technique for this situation? >> All of the responses have been excellent on this. If, for whatever reason, the coil needs lifting, the very thin hook made from piano wire is the tool to use. When I took the training course in Steinway voicing with Scott Jones RPT in 1991, he made me, by hand, a tool from a scrap piece of fairly heavy wound string. He formed a tiny hook at the end of a short length of bare wire and made a loop for a handle with the part of the string that had winding on it. I still have this tool and use it to correct difficult coil lifting circumstances. You can also modify a standard string hook by grinding down the hook carefully until it is about the diameter of some very heavy guage piano wire. This modified hook would naturally be fragile, so you should keep it and use it only for tight spots. To effectively straighten out a bad coil, loosen the string while getting your thin screwdriver blade or hook under the leading edge of it. Pull up the tension as you pry with the screwdriver or lift with the hook just enough so that there is some tone to the string but fairly far from being up to pitch. Use a coil seater or just the same screwdriver blade and tap down the other side of the coil so that it is fairly perpendicular. You can then tighten the string some more, but still below pitch and refine the coil by repeating the above. Make sure the beckett is tightly closed. Sometimes a bad coil needs one or two rough attempts at rectifying it just as a badly out of tune piano needs repeated corrections to refine it. There is no such thing as a tuning pin coil which cannot be fixed! Sincerely, Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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