cracked beam

[Ron Nossaman]

At 11:12 AM 4/10/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Has anyone tried repairing a cracked beam on a small grand piano using
>epoxy? the crack is about 2 feet long and 1/4 inch wide at it's worst. I
>don't know how deep the crack is. It is the beam on the *straight* side.
> 
>Regards,
>Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.M.T., R.P.T.



Hi Don,
Like Jim said, I can't see how it would hurt anything to patch it, or to
leave it alone, for that matter. The crack isn't the result of extreme load,
or racking or twisting. It's most likely internally generated by uneven
shrinkage with humidity swings. The beam doesn't hold up the world, so the
crack is really mostly cosmetic. Can you narrow the crack by clamping the
sides of the beam? If so, it's deep enough that I would "fix" it. I think
I'd trowel some Titebond up in there with a spatula to get it as deep in the
crack as I could, then clamp the beam to close the crack as much as is
reasonably possible. Then I'd screw or dowel in the side of the beam, nearly
full depth, through the crack, every four inches or so, and put a wood shim
in the surface to hide whatever gap remains and hold the glue in there until
it dries. Seems like a lot of work for something that probably isn't that
critical, but it should go pretty quickly and leave a decent looking result.
No guarantees as to exactly what it will do next year, but it surely be more
solid than it is now.

Anyway, that's what I'd do.
 
 Ron