Hi Terry, I would encourage you to rethink your pricing for the following reasons: 1. you have "saved" the piano with a repair that you have perfected, one that many many techs would not attempt so they would just condemn the piano. 2. You have a considerable investment in the West System epoxies, and have developed a significant knowledge base on how to use them. That alone is worth more than a $20 flat fee. I often charge a $20 flat fee for anytime the CA glue comes out. 3. My thinking is $60/hr is an average fee for average work that most tuners would be able to accomplish: changing bridle straps, gluing on a broken hammer shank, etc. Highly specialized work should command higher rates. You might not think what you did highly specialized, but consider, how many other techs in the country would do the work you did? You'll find lots that would epoxy, but I dare say you'll find very few to use or stock the caliber material you use and very few of the finished jobs anywhere close to the quality of repair you did. You should consider that perhaps it went incredibly smoothly because you had all the problems figured out in advance, you knew what steps to take, in what sequence, what to pack from the shop so you had everything you needed, etc. That's the kind of efficient expertise that we forget to charge for. We've done it long enough and well enough, that we forget what it cost us to get here. $60/hr is a good rate to charge for the amount of time that it used to take. For a guy that has no problem getting $1000 for an expanding action bracket job, I'd think any job that required 3 service calls, utilized expensive repair materials, required specialized knowledge skills, that saved a piano most techs would condemn, I'd think that job should be worth closer to $300-400, plus the tuning. I've looked at the West System web site a couple of times. It looks pretty overwhelming plus the start up costs didn't look too cheap. Think about your investment in the product and your investment in learning how to use it. Then don't short change that knowledge. I think you are worth more. ;-) Dean Dean May cell 812.239.3359 PianoRebuilders.com 812.235.5272 Terre Haute IN 47802 _____ From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Farrell Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2007 5:35 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Bass Bridge Epoxy Repair We had a recent thread on repairing cracked bass bridges with epoxy. The question was raised on how much time a repair might take. I just completed a repair today on an old Acrosonic bass bridge. About five notes were affected - the treble-most notes on the bass bridge. Upon starting to tune the piano (she tunes every six years whether the piano needs it or not), I noticed the upper bass was way flat. Checked it with my Verituner and saw that the top five notes were about 30 cents flat. Looked at the bridge and saw that the speaking side bridge pins on those notes were standing up straight and a crack ran right through all the speaking pins on the top five notes. You could see that the strings had straightened out and that the cap had moved a bit. I removed the affected strings and the cap came right off and the pins were easy to remove. I spent about a half hour that first day. I came back a week later with my box of West System epoxy, their slow hardener and their High Strength/Density filler. I wet all wood mating surfaces with unthickened epoxy, then mixed in the filler to a peanut-butter consistency and applied that to all surfaces. Mooshed the cap piece in place and scraped off squeeze out. Pushed bridge pins back in with pliers. Cleaned up squeeze-out. Put a couple spring clamps on to keep all in place. Came back a few days later (today), put strings back on, pulled up to pitch, tuned piano. My on-site hourly fee is $60/hr. and I charged her $200 for the bridge repair (that included a $20 flat epoxy fee). So I guess I put a total of three hours into the repair (that included a half hour in my shop prepping (putting together a box of epoxy supplies, etc.). Plus tuning of course - so the total was $295. I though this was about the easiest and most straight-forward bridge repair I have ever done - usually they present some additional challenge. Hope this helps someone. Terry Farrell Farrell Piano www.farrellpiano.com terry at farrellpiano.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20070813/d5b4acd5/attachment.html
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