[pianotech] CA glue in the UK

[John Delacour]

At 23:52 +0000 7/2/09, Bill Troop wrote:

>1. Where can I find a reliable source of the right kind of thin 
>viscosity CA glue in England? (This would be for tightening pins on 
>my 1908 8'4" Schiedmayer.

Any model shop will have the right stuff.

>5. Finally, just a bit more info about the worst, extreme bass pins. 
>My tech says they seem greasy - - as if someone had used WD-40 on 
>them. My understanding is that the CA treatment seems to work 
>despite whatever gunk may be present. If CA doesn't work, obviously 
>we'll have to try something else.

I haven't got the scale of the 8'4" Schiedmayer in front of me, 
though I probably have it at the factory, but if it's like any other 
Schiedmayer I have dealt with as a restorer and bass string maker, I 
wouldn't mess about with any quick fixes.  Is it a Schiedmayer 
Pianofortefabrik or a Schiedmayer & Soehne?  They are two completely 
different things.  Both of them used frighteningly high tension 
scales including in the bass.  What you need to do is measure the 
length of the strings on each note and record the gauges, and the 
overall diameter of the bass strings as well, so that the strains can 
be calculated.  There's nothing much you can do to reduce the strain 
on the plain wire unless you fit a new bridge in a different 
position, but at least the bass can be rescaled to bring it to viable 
levels, and the tone would improve as well.  How many of the bass 
strings have already been replaced?

You're welcome to phone me or send me details of the scale so that I 
can make the calculations and present you with the grisly truth, but 
it was owing to a Schiedmayer many years ago that I became a 
stringmaker, because nobody else could make strings for it that 
didn't break!  And if I hadn't rescaled every Schiedmayer I've made 
for customers since, I'd have got myself a very bad reputation.

JD
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