My question!

[John Delacour]

At 6:50 AM -0500 12/18/01, Clyde Hollinger wrote:

>...he has very little experience to speak of, since most of it is 
>tinkering with his old upright, for which he seems to have a great 
>deal of fondness.  Therefore, some of his...

That's how I began.  For £30 I bought a good upright in very bad 
condition just after my marriage and wanted to set it right.  The 
first thing I discovered was that the supply houses would supply only 
to the trade and the second was that there was a hell of a lot to it.

A friend of mine who was making a bit of money on the side doing 
deliveries came across some garages where a couple of men were doing 
up pianos and told me about them.  I went round there and offered my 
services free of charge on Saturdays if he would teach me 
french-polishing.  I was in luck because the man was a scoundrel but 
happened to be a very good polisher and had worked in the best shops.

I then persuaded him to let me take on some action work and began 
with the very roughest of old overdamper actions, putting my heart 
and soul into them and learning quite early the advantage of writing 
numbers on the parts before dismantling.  He paid me £20 per action. 
By the time he had several back and I still had two ready for 
collections and still not a penny, I phoned him one night and told 
him if he didn't come the next day with cash, his actions would go on 
the bonfire.  By this time I had my accounts set up and supplies 
coming in.

We then bought our first house and a neighbour was the highly 
respected and very proud tuner for the Orchestra, who was a good 
tuner but as lousy a repairer as I ever hope to meet, though I didn't 
know it at the time.  Within weeks I was working on Steinway grands 
and all sorts of nice stuff and getting paid for it and doing lots of 
research.  I cut the day job down to half time and within six months 
stopped teaching altogether and was able to live by pianos alone.

Like most of us of course, within no time I was filthy rich and able 
to buy thirty racehorses and a castle in Spain.

28 years later, the upright is not quite finished. If you want 
quality, Madam, I'm afraid you'll have to be patient.  :-)

JD