I've been using my hammer like crazy lately...



Would much rather be pulling some strings...lol

Looking good Les! Do I dare say that you're "board" with it? Or, you're "Strutting" your stuff? Orrrr, you're in the right "frame" of mind? Orrrr, your house is really all "decked" out? Orrrrrr, you live on the upper "tier?" Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

You "nailed" it, Jerry.

Of late, just "joisting" around... btw, it's a clients house, my other job.

Had an old Acro with the capstans and booby trap sticker guides and 150 cents low in pitch. They sell stuff on ebay and had a 3 foot long tube labeled “music wire” that they had not been able to sell and wondered if I was interested. I remember that some hardware stores would carry music wire. I looked inside and sure enough there was a selection of straight-as-an-arrow piano wire without rust, with the ends sawed instead of snipped off, and including some larger sizes. So I said sure I am interested. Sometimes a bass string breaks and I need a piece of heavier wire to splice it. (I don’t have a proper selection, but often just use the heaviest I have…) They said they barter. So what happens? You guessed it, a bichord broke. So I didn’t charge for the splice and got the tube of music wire. I haven’t checked all the sizes, but the largest is 0.125 and the smallest 0.020. Hope I never need the largest!!!

I tied a knot in note C1 on a Mason Hamlin at the U. I brought the string home, and with the help of a bench vise, made the knot. Wire was a bit stiff..............

Ouch! That's serious torque you have to apply. What sized wire did you have to use?

I used size 21. I tried do make the knot at the school, but there was no way it was going to be small enough to rest in the speaking length. This is an Aeolian Mason that was in a teacher's office but it's just been moved to a practice room. It needs new hammers and strings. I replaced the crusty damper felt two years ago.

Encouraged by Jerry and others, I realized that I can pull a piano up to approximate pitch very fast, with or without an ETD. Tried that today, and the important thing is "don't dwell".

Well, I don't dwell in my everyday life anymore, but I have a hard time transferring that revelation through my tuning hammer. Anyways, I got where I wanted to be in 15 min - about half the time I normally use. Thanks Jer!

So what did you do with the 15 minutes you saved?

got ready just in time to synchronize our time schedules, and - for once - was there to give my wife a ride back home.

Once those 15 min pitch raises are good, pay attention to how much you turn the lever in relation to the change in pitch. Then evaluate the piano, and pull it close to pitch without playing any notes. That's a blind pitch raise and takes about 4 minutes.

4 minutes? That is 1 string per second!

Can you make a video of that?

That's right, one hand on the tuning pin tip, one hand on the end of the lever, elbow resting somewhere to control the amount of pull.

One can learn to do this by strip muting the whole piano, tuning the center string by ear, noting how far you move the tuning pin, and duplicate the movement on the outside pins of that note without playing the note. That's a fairly safe way to start. It's easy to raise strings too far at first.

I will try it. But I think it will be easier with two mutes. You can check each string after you tuned it.

That's impressive, Bob.

There are a few customers that stick in my mind because I was tuning their piano when some major event happened like 9-11, or the shuttle crashes. Last night will be one of those. The customer told me when I arrived the families black lab was sick, and as I was almost though the tuning, the poor dog started taking a turn for the worse. Everyone had teary eyes, including me. There is nothing like the love of a loyal dog.

what a fine question! It lives forever. Today I was out in spa, temps in VA were 70s, so very nice. This is into my very busy season for tuning, I'm am planning to do 4 on Labor Day tomorrow. Then play catch-up at college the other days until we leave for NC Friday after DAR meeting. LG

We went to the cabin for the holiday weekend. Saw a rattler with 8 rattles. It was up on the hill far from the cabin, so I let it go. I must be getting soft.

You're not getting soft you're just probably becoming more enlightened.
There is no reason for anybody to kill snakes.
They want to keep out of your way just as much as you want them to keep out of your way.
Besides they eat rodents and make nature more interesting.

Today I looked at a small Blüthner grand for sale for a client. It used to be a nice piano, but it is quite old now, and needs refurbishing. For my client's purposes, he would be better off getting one of the quite nice new Asian pianos in that size range.

The customer bought the Cable Console new, 38 years ago. After evaluating the pitch, I suggested perhaps it hasn't been tuned in 38 years? The customer laughed. 1 hour and 45 minutes later, the piano was at pitch, and ready for the grandson to take lessons.

inventoried my stuff I am selling! Did NOT realize I had SOOOO much

Tell it to my hound! He hates snakes and kills every one that he can. I trust his judgment. He was with me and if I had decided to kill it, he would have gotten in on the act and probably got bit. But left to his own devises, probably not. He's real savvy in the woods.

Dissasembled a Knabe upright to bring up the keyboard to a shop and have the keytops replaced. Tuned 3 pianos. An old Rosenkranz upright, a nice Scholze studio and an ugly console Melodygrand identical to the one I used to have.

so, I completed my inventory that is for sale, skipped out on college venue, Good day!,SM

Tuned 2 pianos day before yesterday, seeing how I felt after my surgery, tuned 3 more yesterday, was a bit more sore and tired and have 3 planned tunings today as well and 2 for tomorrow and 5 for Saturday... Back into the regular routine again after this week, me thinks...

I went to tune for a funeral home and when I got there the owner asked if it was OK that the room was set up for a service. I didn't really think about what he meant by that until we got into the room and the piano was setup next to a casket with the focus of the service already in it. It wasn't too bad except I kept thinking I heard movement from the casket next to me.