One of THOSE days

[Rodney Pritchett]

It was a 20's (Baldwin) Howard grand, and all was proceeding as
expected, until the time came to pull the action.

The action doesn't shift, but has one of those thingees that raises the
hammers toward the stings.  The front of the keyframe is screwed to the
keybed.  OK.  Screws removed.  The bass end of the action won't move. 
Hmm. . . My first thought was the movers used too long of a screw to
attach the legs and had screwed the keybed to the frame.  But these legs
had locking plates.

Using my (actually Susan Graham's design) Jack-in-the-Box kit to remove
the bass leg, I was able to figure it out.  It turns out that in it's
past, someone, probably not a piano tech, had removed the leg plates to
plug the screw holes and redrill because they old holes were stripped. 
The plugs of choice were 1/2" dowels.  Whoever drilled the holes for the
dowels also drilled into the keybed and apparently no thought was given
as to how long the dowels should be.  They extended above the keybed and
into the keyframe, locking it in place - good thing this action didn't
shift.

I was able to lift the bass end of the keyframe enough to get my flush
cut saw in there and slice the dowels off.  From there it was pretty
straight forward, but it really had me going for a few minutes until I
figured out what the story was.

Hope your day went better.

Rodney Pritchett
Marietta, GA