At 21:45 -0500 20/2/08, A440A at aol.com wrote: >...There is a spring loaded button in the top of the treble side music >desk support. It operates a small lever located down below the >support, but it is not connected to anything I can see. It has a >small concave surface on >the top, but pushing on it does nothing but flex the spring it is >connected to. Anybody seen one of these and know what it is for? >There may be something missing, as this piano has been rebuilt. The "Richard Wagner" model, about 1900 7'4" has a desk that may be similar in design to the original on yours. It has no runners but it fixed. The front edge has three dowels, one in the middle of each candleboard and one in the middle of the rail, which register with holes in the back side of the lock front, and each candleboard has a wooden turnbuckle that goes into slots in the rim, where the desk guides would be, to lock the desk in place. The desk itself is of a quite extraordinary design, not imitated by any other maker, thank goodness! My guess is that your sprung button, with some sort of latch arrangement, served the same purpose as the turnbuckles on the RW model -- to lock the desk down -- and that whoever rebuilt the piano modified the desk to be modre conventional. JD
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