At 10:25 am -0500 31/7/06, Chuck Beck wrote: >I recently began extensive action work on an 1894 WW Kimball grand >for myself. I found all of the wippens sluggish so I began >repinning the flanges. I found that almost all of the pins, while >also corroded, were all bent on one or both sides of the birdseye. >Some of these bends were up to 30 degrees. Repinning went fine, but >I was just curious if anyone else has often encountered bent center >pins this extensively in their keyboards. It had almost certainly been repinned some time in the past 112 years by a botcher, of whom there has always been a rich supply. He probably also used pins about 5 sizes bigger than necessary as well. In such case, which are not rare in my experience, I normally rebush the flanges, draw water through the pin holes in the body to swell the wood and then use the smallest possible pin that will be tight in the holes once they have dried out and shrunk. It is usually possible to use a pin only one or two sizes larger than was installed at the factory. I'd say there is one "legitimate" use for a pin bent slightly at each side and that is when the whippen has no jack flange but is itself bushed for the jack. If a few jacks are not at right angles, then carefully pre-bent pins can be used and turned in the bushes until the jack is straight. If the jack has a flange, I remove the flange and reglue it straight. JD
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