Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Informational articles (with photos) available at no cost.

I would like to make available a series of articles that I wrote for Schaff before the Grand Rapids PTG convention last summer. CD's of 12 of these articles were given away at the convention by Schaff. I've now completed 17 articles thus far, and have been given permission to make the entire set available to anyone interested.

The articles done so far cover a range of topics under the headings of case work, belly work, key work, action work, tools and shop ideas. The thing I enjoyed about writing them is that, unlike articles I do for the Journal, for these there is no limit to the number of pictures I can use. Thus, I can go into much more detail.

Some of the articles are very basic, some are quite a bit more complicated, but all, I believe would be useful to anyone learning the business of piano repair and/or restoration.

Being that I was commissioned by Schaff to write the articles, tools and products used in various repairs are given, along with catalog numbers for your convenience. Of course, you may purchase your supplies from whatever supply house you wish, but at least this gives you a concrete list of what purchases you would be looking at in order to tool up for adding a new repair to your repertoire of work you're able to do.

If you would like to be included in my list of people to send these articles to, please drop me a note at behmpiano@gmail.com. If you were already on my list for the photographic essay, you don't need to do anything. You'll receive these articles unless you for whatever reason don't want them, and wish to be removed from the list. Let me know if that's the case.

Hopefully, down the road I'll be asked to write more of these articles for Schaff. I have ideas (and photos) for a scad (is that a word?) of procedures and tools we use around the shop. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that what I've done so far proves useful to people. Funny thing - after retiring in 2006 from teaching writing to 9th and 10th graders (for 36 years - yikes!) I love to write. Back when I was grading stacks of essays every night, writing was the last thing I ever wanted to do with my spare time. Now, there's nothing I enjoy more after a day tuning, or in the shop, than to sit down, pull some pictures off my files, and write up some procedures. Go figure.

Finally, to get back on topic, several people have e-mailed to ask if they could receive the photo sets for the photographic journal, since those have been sent out a first time around. The answer is "yes!" I would be more than happy to resend the photo sets to anyone who missed out the first mailing. This journal is quite complete, and I believe would be useful to anyone who was considering going beyond tuning and repair, and giving restoration a try. Again, just drop me a note.

Well, I'm off to tune for the day. Have a good one. Chuck

Chuck you're awesome! The quality of work and the details are amazing... thank you once more time ;-).

Hello Chuck.
I have no words to express my gratitude for your generosity. Your photosets are the best companion possible to my Reblitz. This articles are manah from heaven!
A big hug.
Enrique

I was amazed with the quality of the writing, now I understand better !

Chuck:

Since you wrote these articles for Schaff, are they available from them, also?

Good question - They should be, as soon as they go on-line with their e-store. At least, that's what they've told me all along. When the e-store will go live is the big question. At convention time in Grand Rapids, it was 2 more weeks before it was ready. At Thanksgiving - 2 more weeks. Christmas, 2 more weeks. I'm sure if I were to call and ask Rob Johnson today, it would be 2 more weeks. I think working out the bugs has taken more time than they ever anticipated when they started working on it.

Anyway, the idea that they've given me is that these will be available for free download on their website once things are finally up and running. I've hoped the articles would be free all along, and apparently, that works best for them as well.

I can't say anything with 100% confidence, however, at least not until the e-store is a reality. Right now, I'm just waiting. Herb Johnson of Schaff (who has been wonderful to work with, by the way) gave me the go-ahead to send the articles out to interested technicians in the interim. That's why I'm sending them out to anyone interested in seeing them.

My only hope is that the articles, if they actually do make them available as they have indicated, are useful enough to people that they actually do download them, and try some new things out. If Schaff sees that they make a difference in sales, I'm sure it would be easier for them to justify the expense of having more articles written. And if I am able to earn some sort of a paycheck writing the articles, I can in turn justify to my wife the incredible amount of time it takes to write them.

To be perfectly honest, although I have plenty of tuning work to keep me busy, after being on the road as a tuner part time for 30 some years, and now that I've retired from teaching, pretty much full time, I would love to be able to spend the majority of my time in my shop with my restoration projects. If I could boost my shop income somehow with my writing, it could work out that I wouldn't have to drive all over creation to earn a living. Yesterday, for example, I drove over ice-covered roads here in rural Iowa, risking my neck just getting in and out of the car, to tune 8 pianos. Was I wishing I was in my warm shop, working on the grand action sitting on my bench, or taking pictures of a procedure for writing an article? Was I ever.

Anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to know. I'm just trying to make things work out for everyone involved. The best I can do is keep my fingers crossed, and put my best effort into what writing I find time to do.

Thanks for the question. Wish I could give you a more concrete yes or no answer. Chuck

Chuck:

Thanks for the come back and for making these articles available now. I am just not ready to start any re-whatevering projects for a few years and wanted to know where the articles might be available when I am ready. Schaff’s real time line and mine just might coincide.

This reminds me of being asked many times during shipyard overhauls “Mate, do you know when we are going to get out of here?” My reply would be “Yes, I know exactly when we will sail. One week before we are ready.” I was always correct.

One last time, I'm putting the call out for the e-male addresses of any one interested in receiving the 17 technical articles that I've written up. These are extensively photographed, and would be particularly useful to anyone starting up a repair or restoration business.

Hopefully, I'll have the opportunity in the future to do more of this type of writing. I've got a list on a clipboard in my shop with more than 100 topic ideas.

In that it is time consuming organizing e-mail addresses to make sure everyone has gotten all the articles (I send out 3 a day, and it gets confusing at times who has gotten what), this will be the last time that I make this offer, at least for the time being. I'll allow several days for anyone interested to respond, then start one more mailing.

If anyone who is already receiving these articles would like to comment on whether or not they appear to be useful, I would appreciate that.

Have a great day, everyone. Chuck

THis site cvontains also nice step by step instructions on different things as pinning, Frensh polishing boring hammers etc.

John Delacour also works on many pianos, often very old ones and not only on only the best brands Steinways and such not like me !!!!!


http://pianomaker.co.uk/