>Fraudulent claims to insurance companies do happen; our job is to try to >know the difference and be responsible in our actions. > >Diane Diane and Jim B, I wasn't speaking from an insurance fraud perspective, but rather from a technical one. Even if we can say with reasonable assurance, which I can't, that a discovered crack in a soundboard was caused by any particular instance of rough handling or natural disaster, what are the implications here, and the reasonable course of action? Must the crack be "fixed" at any cost, or would there be no discernable difference in sound and function for the rest of the instrument's natural life if it wasn't? If it must be fixed, what's the proper fix? What forces cracked it in the first place? For just a vibrational shock to have done it, the panel would have to have been in tension and on the verge of cracking spontaneously anyway, which would mean that it already wasn't a viable board when the incident happened, so there's no real damage done that wasn't already far past the point that shimming the crack would correct. If it was a good healthy board at the time of the incident, the panel would have been under some degree of compression, even with a primarily rib crowned board, and shouldn't have cracked from vibrational shock. That would about mean that there was enough diagonal shear on the panel to have cracked it whether it was in compression or not. In order for that to happen, wouldn't the rim or liner have to be deformed enough to apply these shear stresses to the soundboard panel? Doesn't that leave the structural integrity of the carcass in question? My point here is that finding a crack in the soundboard that seems to have been caused by either earthquakes or movers, seems to me like it should be either absolutely meaningless, or a major structural disaster, rather than just a matter of shimming the crack. So what's the recommended action submitted to the insurance company in the claim estimates when we find these cracks? Do we ignore them, insist that the piano needs rebuilt, with a new soundboard, or is there a reasonable argument for something in between? Trying to define and thereby know the difference is why I asked the question in the first place. Ron N
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