Running CA

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Greetings, 
    I'll admit, I'm old-fashioned.  I love hot hide glue, I sand the bottom 
of tuning pin bushings so they are all even up top in the plate, rebushing a 
few hammershanks is reasonable if they are the only problems in a virgin 1912 
Steinway, and I would never have gone machine if arthritis hadn't forced me 
to give up the handplay in aural tuning. 
     I once drew the  line at doping pinblocks, fully convinced it was only 
for those that didn't know how to repin...... well,  I have changed.  CA is a 
wonderful thing to put into a pinblock.  I don't flood things with it, but 
find that for marginal pins, 6 or seven drops of the thin stuff makes a huge 
difference. Two things I have learned, or at least, convinced myself: 
    The Gold Bond brand of CA doesn't have any fumes, and is described as 
non-toxic. I  bet someone on the list knows where to get it,(my supply came 
from Frank Weston, but he seems to have been off-list now).  
    The tech using CA needs to know what happens, what can be done later, 
etc.  For this, you need an old pinblock.  Experiment. Put CA on some of the 
old pins you have driven back in, soak a hole or two with one pin in it and 
then take that pin out and hammer in a larger one.  Cut the wood away from a 
treated hole and learn how much CA goes how far.  Put a little at the base of 
a pin three or four pins, then wait a day and add more CA to one ,  does the 
dispersion change?  
   Get acquainted with your torque-wrench and/or take notes on what happens.  
Then, take that piece of pinblock and put it in the basement or attic, with 
the written results you got.  Wait six months and retrieve it, measure what 
happened.  Make conclusions, go out in the field and KNOW (sorta)  what you 
are doing with that little bottle of miracles.  
    What I now think is that the stuff works by increasing the surface area 
that the metal pin rubs against.  "Swelling" of the wood may be involved, but 
the cellular pressure in wood with this sort of chemical intrusion is, imho, 
not enough to make the kinds of difference I see.  Given that the CA is 
inelastic, I don't think the results would be as durable if increased 
pressure was the result of the CA.   I dunno, I haven't my copy of Hoadley 
handy, and don't know if this topic was treated.  
   I don't use CA for the disasterously loose pin, for me, that still calls 
for repinning. However, where there are marginal pins or previous doping with 
one of the old style fluids, the CA seems like magic.  I have taken out a 
previously CA'd pin and hammered in the next oversize and it felt great.  
Going two sizes over caused a stiction problem, it wanted to jump around, 
some. 
  CA sets up via exposure to moisture.  The moisture creates a very dilute 
sulphuric acid in the unstable long chains of the CA. This minute acidity 
breaks the molecules that kept the liquid CA from solidifying, and it then 
sets quite quickly.  I wonder if the kicker has any acidic component, for if 
so,  I think it could be detrimental to the tuning pins and strings.  Anybody 
know more about the chemistry of the kicker? 
REgards, 
Ed Foote RPT