Toyo Pianos

[Elwood Doss]

Again, Dean, this is a GREAT post.  I tried it on a Story & Clark Studio
upright, you know the ones built for churches, and it worked great!  I
also used it on some bass pins on a Yamaha 4' Grand that is 25 years old
and is used at UTM in the University Center Ballroom.  It is beat up
like you wouldn't believe.  I had replaced a few of the bass pins with
larger pins and those were fine.  The others had gone south also so I
used the CA glue on them.  Our top piano professor played it for our
Chancellor's retirement dinner and asked me if I had worked on the
piano.  I said that I had worked on it and tuned it.  She said it played
and sounded great!  She said it had never played better.  Of course I
took all the credit!  That CA glue is fabulous! (I have no idea what my
pin treatment had to do with the touch.)

And yes, you need to repost it at least every year!

Joy!
Elwood

Elwood Doss, Jr., M.M.E., RPT
Piano Technician/Technical Director
Department of Music
145 Fine Arts Building
The University of Tennessee at Martin
Martin, TN  38238
731/881-1852
FAX: 731/881-7415
HOME: 731/587-5700
-----Original Message-----
From: Dean May [mailto:deanmay at pianorebuilders.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:29 PM
To: 'Pianotech List'
Subject: Re: Toyo Pianos

I should just repost this every six months. :-)

Dean

Dean May             cell 812.239.3359 

PianoRebuilders.com   812.235.5272 

Terre Haute IN  47802


There has been much discussion on how to CA treat the tuning pins. You
could
search the archives and spend many hours. Here is a post I sent a couple
of
years ago. Hope it helps.


Use thin CA glue. Don't use accelerator. You want the glue to soak into
the
wood with deep penetration. The accelerator would cause it to set
prematurely. When you give the pin its initial turn after treatment, you
will find there is not much glue left in the joint to bond the pin to
the
wood. It snaps loose pretty easily. It is increased pressure from the
pin
block that tightens the pin and this is exactly what we want.

Fill a hypo oiler with the glue which should be about 2 oz. Lay the
piano on
its back. Apply glue to base of pin very much like you would apply the
old
pin tightener. I squeeze the bottle for 1/2 to 3/4 of second at each
pin. Go
through all pins twice. You should end up with about 1/4 of the bottle
left.
Don't use more than one bottle. That would be overkill. It just doesn't
take
as much glue as you think it should. This glue has tremendous capillary
action. Put a couple of drops on the end of a small dowel rod and watch
it
wick up the grain.

The glue has such positive capillary action that you really don't even
need
to lay the piano down. (It is more convenient and a little safer to lay
it
down.) To apply vertically, just put the tip of the hypo oiler at the
top of
the pin at the base and squeeze out a little glue. The trick is to stop
squeezing before the glue starts running down the plate. Have some
Q-tips
handy to mop up any excess that does run down the plate, or it will go
on
down the strings onto the damper felt. Ask me how I know. You should lay
the
piano down if you have time. But there have been unusual circumstances
where
I wanted to fix the piano without charging the customer full price. A
most
recent one was a customer who had already paid for a regular pin
treatment
several years ago. The pin treatment wasn't holding up very well (it had
already been treated several times before me) so I put the glue on. They
had
already paid me for a pin treatment (Pin-Tite, not CA) to solve the
problem
several years ago. Plus, they were a regular customer so I wanted to
"warranty" my work, even though there was not an express warranty given
(in
fact, with the Pin-Tite treatments I used to always expressly indicate
that
there was NO warranty that it would work). Since I wasn't getting paid
and
didn't have much time, I didn't lay it down. It still worked great, and
this
was a pretty pervasive case of rotten pin block.

If you are doing a grand be sure to put newspaper between the pin block
and
the action, though I've never had any glue make it to the newspaper like
I
have with regular Pin-Tite. You could also remove the action, flip the
piano
upside down and apply the glue to the bottom of the hole. But that
really
isn't necessary.

Let it sit for about 20 minutes. When you use that much glue without
accelerator it takes awhile to cure. 20 minutes usually gives enough
time
for the pins to be tight enough to hold, but you really don't need to
wait.
If a pin isn't tight enough to hold, just go on and tune the others. It
will
be tight enough when you are done with the rest of the piano. I have
found
them to be even tighter after several days. I have had one or two
problem
pins that didn't tighten enough. I removed them, squirted glue directly
into
the hole and immediately re-inserted the pin. Worked beautifully.

I charge the equivalent of about 3 tunings for this 30 minute procedure
and
give it an 8 year warranty, and I'm thinking about raising my price
another
$50. The 8 year warranty is a value added service that justifies the
expense
and really sells it for the customer. Every customer who has purchased
this
work has been very happy about the price. I just did one yesterday for a
church. They are thrilled. They still know that the piano needs rebuilt
or
replaced. They just don't have the money to do that, but they do have
$200-300 to pay for a guarantee that they can make it 8 more years with
the
piano they have. Remember they aren't paying for the 30 minute service;
they
are paying for the value added guarantee. And you are saving them
thousands
of dollars to get them through 8 more years.

I personally haven't been treating pins this way for more than 4 years.
But
other techs I've talked to have ten plus years experience with it and
they
indicate it still works very well. Worst case scenario is that you might
have a piano with 3-4 very problem child pins. If that happens, pull out
last resort tricks: pull pin and squirt glue in hole, use oversize pins,
use
fiberglass resin, or very last resort, drill it out and plug it. Very
worst
case scenario I could refund their money.  But generally I could nurse
any
piano along for a few more years even before I had the CA glue trick.
Now I
am even more confident that I can get them through another 8 years with
the
CA glue.

As I've said before, I like Kwick Kleen (www.kwickkleen.com) brand of
CA. It
is always fresh. You can call to order with a credit card at (888)
222-9767.
I'd recommend a half dozen bottles of thin, one bottle of medium and an
8 oz
bottle of accelerator for a start up order. And be sure to get a dozen
hypo
oilers from Schaff. Some guys like to use syringes. I like hypo oilers.
Whatever you use, the tips will plug eventually, so get plenty of them.
I
peel the label off an empty glue bottle and put it on the hypo oiler so
I
know what is in there (doesn't everyone have a dozen hypos on their
bench
with various unknown fluids in them?). When the tip plugs I just change
tips
and throw the new hypo bottle away. Wish I could buy just the tips
somewhere.

Dean May

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