Thanks so much for all the help with diagnosing and prioritizing a coarse of action with the Vose grand. You all are wonderful. Wow. The update is that the sounboard crown is good, it really sings. The scale has two breaks instead of three, a minus, but has aggraffs in the tenor, a plus, and the angle where the plate drops away from the wires behind the aggraffs is significant so that's another plus. Corrosion on the felt under the wires isn't so bad. It can be brushed out, so that's good. We pulled three pins and shined a flashlight in the pin holes.(action removed) The goo (pin tightener fluid ) had not penetrated the pinblock, visually, and the removed pins didn't show the corrosion expected if the PBR had saturated the block. They had sawdust in the threads When I scraped the inside of the pin holes with a dental tool, it felt like metal instead of wood. (burnished?) Also, the pinblock laminants didn't appear to be separating. Seems like the pin tightening fluid hadn't been thinned enough to penetrate. Looking underneath, we could see that some of the pins had been driven through the pinblock to reveal about 1/8". It turns out that the customer has a meagar(zip) budget at this time, so the plan is to try another PBR, and a pitch raise. The customer knows that this is a gamble. I may be replacing pins also, but hopefully fewer if that's the case. I'm going to use Garfields Pinblock Restore, and thin it way down, (60-70% alcohol). I'll double dose the pins with the action removed and paper laying on the keybed to catch any solution that may run through. The pins weren't consistent, except that they were apparently all size three, but not all are tapered, and the tapered ones looked newer, judging by the color. Could that be? If this works, there will only be enough budget left to do minamal resuscitation on the action. I'll file the hammers. They have beautiful felt, actually. Too bad their is not much left, but I think I can carefully get some semblance of shape back. I'll also put epoxy in a couple hairline cracks on the tenor bridge, and tap in some hitch pins. One note in that region had a bit of a whoosh sound. After that I'll do a minor regulation and tune it. Will that suffice, considering the budget? In regards to servicing the piano in the future, I believe the customer is willing to continue the process of rehabilitation, over time, but she couldn't go for the whole nine yards approach, or top estimate. I should note that she's not the main player here. This is for friends, when they visit, who reportedly play well. So it looks like I have the opportunity to educate her a bit on what's possible to hear out of her piano. (Um, Sometimes, I feel like I'm just one chapter ahead of the class, and I'm supposed to teach? Know what I mean? Newbie talk. oops, sorry) Guy decided to be a major hero by coming up with 6" caster cups to unbury the pedals from the rug. Our dainty feet appreciate that. HIS size 17 shoe DIDN'T need the pedals unearthed. Ha!This is hysterical because I can actually consider MY foot dainty in this context. (I have a size 12.) Anyway, thanks again to all of you who had feedback on this. By the way, Mr. Newton Hunt, you are formally from Deming N.M.?! Amazing. I'll be over there Thursday, tuning for the Diaz Farms clan. Need some chili? Jill
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