Re: Broadwoodgrand°1894

[Farrell]

Impressive looking piano. Thanks for posting the picture.

I have no experience with this type of piano. But it looks like you are doing a very thorough job in general, why skimp on the pinblock? If you want to avoid replacement because of difficulty, etc., first make sure the pinblock is intact and very well secured in place, and then consider either cutting out the tuning pin area of the block and epoxy-ing in new pinblock material, or plugging with 1/2" plugs. Both these procedures would require removal of the forward plate-lette. If the plate holes are bigger than the pin, you could drill out the tuning pin holes with whatever size hole is in the plate and plug with that size plug without removing the plate. I guess you could also drill out the plate holes bigger and use bigger plugs - like 3/8" or so - but that seems like a pretty brutal thing to do to a lovely old piano. 

I can't imagine the plate could be that hard to remove. Likely the pinblock is mortised into the case, etc., but does it appear that the plate is also imbedded into the case somehow? If it is only screwed and maybe glued to the pinblock, I would sure be tempted to do a little bit of gentle prying.

And please, what is a new "ciresa" soundboard? How did you go about arriving at a rib and panel design for the instrument? Please let us know what you end up doing with the pinblock, etc. I had looked at one of these pianos a while back. If I had the $$ I would have bought it. I would like to try one of these sometime in the future.

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Danny Boddin" <danny.boddin@pandora.be>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 5:07 PM
Subject: Broadwoodgrand°1894


This Broadwood has oblong threaded tuningpins which go into the plate before
they catch the pinblock.
We intend to replace them with the same size normal tuningpins which first
will get a thread of the same dimension.
Nicer looking and easier tuning.
Do you think this will work? I mean, will this piano hold his tuning
afterwards? The pinblock itself is in good condition and we prefer not to
replace it: the plate seems to be glued on it, probably difficult to remove
or not? Meaby we can put some epoxy
in the pinblockholes for better fix of the new pins?

This 2 meter grand will get a new ciresa soundboard. Any idea what kind of
strings and best sounding scale we can use for restringing? I'm scared to
use the 'pure sound' since even with the right calculated scaling up to the
specifications from Juan Mas Cabré in some grands we restrung some strings
broke after a while and even one year later.
Thanks,
Danny Boddin
Ternat, Belgium