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The truck didn't turn over very well Saturday morning.

My 9am was a 1940's era Baldwin Acro with a warped key bed. The hammers were more than an inch off the hammer rest rail at the low bass and high treble, graduating to about 1/4" off the rail in the center. The customer is 89 years old, and suddenly decided to learn the piano, so this was a $300 Craigs List find. Fortunately, there was enough capstan travel to get the end hammers on the rest rail and the rest of the action just needed a few minor repairs. Raised pitch and tuned. Finished about 12 noon.

Truck turned over a bit worse.

Went to the store and tuned a Steinway M - finished by 1:30pm.

This time the truck barely started, so off I went to the dealer, who replaced the battery. My 2pm tuning turned into 4pm, and my 4pm waited till 6pm, but everyone was happy, including me, as the dealer replaced the battery for free under the warranty- and I didn't lose money on missed tunings.

After sleeping late on Sunday, I spent the afternoon replacing flanges on a Yamaha vertical with broken spring cords. No butt plates, so I opted for re pinning flanges instead of gluing new cords.

Won first place at the County Fair for a woodworking project. After investing in shop equipment I thought a wooden lock something Like This would be a good “getting to know you” project. There were three entries in the category and the 1st place price was $3! (The entry fee was $2…)

Put my IT hat on this week. Purchased a new PC for the wife - Windows 7/Office 2007 - am now trying to get all of her transcription software to work with W7 & Word. Will someone please just let me tune a spinet with lots of false beats...PLEASE.

IT...ouch!

Yesterday I tuned a spinet at a cafe/art gallery for a show this weekend, a Kawai upright for a music teacher, and a Kawai GM-12 petite grand 50 miles away (with a huge time gap between the last two). Rather than try to muster up another appointment to fill that gap, I decided to take my bike and gear so that I could ride up to the summit 3900 foot Mt. Diablo on a beautiful 72 degree day with a light breeze. Well worth it! Self employment does have its perks.

Came home early from vacation this week just to work. To darned busy not to work. But, am only tuning 1/2 days, mornings. Went to Dr. Found out I have a hernia, as I suspected. Need surgery. That's gonna be fun. NOT. OUCH. Oh well, I'm still busy as a beaver on a wood tick farm. Did that make any sense? Didn't think sooooo.

Hey Jerry, I need to have that done to me too... not the beaver on a wood tick thingy either...

Yesterday a friend who is trying to do some piano tuning came over with a grand shank that he had pushed the bushing cloth out of. It is just an example of the trouble that you can get into with too little knowledge.

Aside from the bushing, the hole in the birdseye was enlarged and elongated. I fixed that, too.

Did you bonk him on the head with it afterward BDB?

No, I showed him some of the tricks: how to prepare the cloth so it goes through the hole easily, tightening the birdseye by glueing a strip cut from a business card, that sort of thing.

Well, it is not about pianos all the time around here. Sometimes I take a break and do other projects...like this one.

A young fellow came to me about building a music box as a gift.

So I sent him off with some old decorative piano boards I had lying around here; you know ones with a lot of detail and scroll work on the inlay pieces of the front board. Sometimes the inlay pieces are ¼ inch hardwood and this is what is needed for a music box. He is busy carving them up into the correct size pieces. Then once constructed I have to colour and finish the unit.

Kind of a fun project actually....

http://picasaweb.google.ca/silverwoodpianos/MusicBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCJzwsdLS0ovR7wE#

Sounds interesting Dan. A great idea. Could you post a picture of the finished or almost finished unit?

Sure thing Byron,

When the unit comes back for colour and finishing I will take some shots and post them.

He is looking for midnight red. What you do is colour red mahogany or cherry and then successive coats of NGR black tint in the gun until you get the darkness you want.

So the item will appear black from 20 ft away and the when you get up REAL CLOSE you can see the red under-tone....

Tuned a Fazioli 278 earlier today ... Pretty neat piano !!

40th high school reunion tonight, first reunion I've been to. I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to it or not.

You will be surprised Dave. I was....

It was very interesting: Lots of old friends I'd forgotten about but was very happy to see. I had a good time, and ended up liking several people I never knew before, too!

Mine is later this year. I will not be going. It is in my busy season. Besides, I was only there a couple of years, and have had no contact with anyone I went there with since I graduated until this year.

Tuned 4 pianos today. 2 in 2 homes and 2 in a church. Arriving to the church, we found a very full parking lot which only means one thing.... A funeral... I had to kill two hours. The one piano was directly below (OF COURSE!) the sanctuary which could be heard up there. Of course, the other piano was in the sanctuary. So, we took a very looooooooooooooong lunch hour. 2 hours worth. Then, I dropped off my son to the church while I went and played around with EBVT III on my last tuning for the day. It came out pretty nice considering the piano was almost 1/2 tone flat when I arrived. Then, I went back to the church and helped my son finish up. Then, home, Toto, home I went.

@Jerry: Where is the hernia located - is it gonna be tricky to operate on? (Sorry if I miss out on the subtleties of language)

Speaking of ticks, I took up my fallowed field soccer career last week (local division 6 play), but my positive thinking got some several blows right from the beginning. During the first game (in the intermission pee-pause), a tick decided that I was worth clinging too. Removed after about 24 hrs, it still gave me a tickle fever.

Next game, I got a muscle rupture in my right thigh - giving me a bruise the size of an over-sized post card. Needless to say, hurting as h*ll.

So I think higher powers are throwing hints at me - they really think I should end vacation and do some less dangerous work.

Hi Patrick,

I answered your question via PM! I'm not saying it here!!!