[pianotech] HFM encounters of the third kind

[Laura Olsen]

Ron,

You should submit this to the Journal for the "Tuner's Life" page.  Good job!  You're a pro.

Laura Olsen
Barrington, IL

On Aug 15, 2011, at 7:14 PM, Ron Nossaman wrote:

> 
> It all started out on one of those "trapped" notes, when an old friend and long time customer referred one of her students to me for piano service. While it wasn't her fault, it WAS a Henry F Miller spinet. Strike one. When I arrived, the piano was sitting about three feet out from the wall, with all the stuff that was on top now piled on the bench, which was against the wall next to the piano. Strike two, and a foul down the first base line. We muscled it back to the wall, I unloaded and retrieved the bench, and got a look inside. Right smack in the middle, there was a broken hammer shank. Now here's where it starts to get interesting. There are people, and I was one of them once or twice many years ago, who can get a hammer assembly out of a spinet through a superhuman series of contortions and incantations. This, I can still do, but it's one way magic. The problem is getting the bloody thing back in when you can't see what's happening, can't tell enough by feel to make up for that, and have a demonically possessed jack spring loaded into the very center of any attempts to get around it. So I, slow learner that I am, eventually gave up trying and in more recent years, just pull the action. JUST pull the action, he says, as if there were anything "just" about it. Unhook all the hangers, and pull all the keys out, since there isn't clearance with them in. Remove the front board stops and brackets from the sides, because the action won't clear them. Remove three screws on top, and five at the bottom of the action to separate it from the piano. Verbally fend off well meaning but scary offers to help just as I was getting the thing past the last obstacle (the damper lifter lever under the bass plate strut), and set it down on the dark entry path rug rather than the beige carpet. So far so good, or I've overlooked something deadly. With the action nominally at my temporary mercy, I pulled the offending hammer assembly.
> 
> There it is - strike three. I was rewarded with a vision of a floppy hammer and a wad of Scotch Magic Mending tape as big as my thumb randomly and loosely packed around the break. I'm here to tell you folks, Magic Mending Tape isn't, and doesn't. Cutting the MMT off, I found one of the most wonderfully insane things I've ever seen in a piano, which is no small thing, as the competition is pretty steep. It was a Band-Aid (Curad, actually, I think), complete with center pad. No glue whatsoever. So when the band-aid didn't heal it, and the MMT didn't mend it, it was considered beyond further attempts, with all the best shots already used up. Oh, I didn't mention, someone at his church gave the piano to him. Gee! The break was about a third of the way down the shank, and proved to be straight across once I got all the pressure sensitive tool kit scraped off, which I thought very weird. But then...
> 
> Out to the truck, pull the shank from both parts, grab a new shank, and head back inside. Putting the butt back in, I once again verified that, even with the thing lying on the floor where I can see it and reach everything, the jack is still demonically possessed and spring loaded against successful access and that makes all the difference. Eventually, I got the thing in, set the action in the piano, and glued in the shank. As that dried, I installed all the screws, stops, brackets, and pedal rods, and reconnected the action to the keys. Sigh. Tuning time.
> 
> Oddly enough, it was pretty close to pitch, on average, but the tuning was all over the place. Made me consider again that the tuner possibly WAS responsible for the "repair", both displaying similar skill levels. Matters not, it's less bad now.
> 
> I was about cooked by then, at 82°, put the box back together and submitted a considerably bigger bill than I had originally anticipated. I hadn't quoted him anything specific on repairs, but he watched some of the gladitorializing from the dining room, so he understood the reason for the total.
> 
> Back home for lunch. Another morning in paradise.
> Ron N