[pianotech] Bass string winding too long

[paulmulik at yahoo.com]

Hi all,

About three years ago, I arrived at a church to tune a Baldwin spinet and found a broken bass string (B2 - single string, not a bichord). I sent it off and had a replacement made, but when I installed the new string the winding was about 1/4 inch too long at the tuning pen end.  I went ahead and installed it anyway, and it worked, but as you've already guessed, after the most recent tuning, the winding is now all the way up to the pin and the string would probably break if it were tuned any higher.  

Normally I would just send the string back for a replacement, but there's a catch. This church is 80 miles from my house, in a rural area far from any other technicians (as far as I know) and I only get there once a year.  

Rather than ordering another string, is it possible to remove part of the winding (say four or five turns) from the existing string, the way one would do with those universal bass strings?  Or would that ruin the string?  What tool(s) would one use for this?

Thanks,
Paul Mulik
Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone