Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Broke my favorite tip

Yesterday was a sad day. Somehow while putting my favorite tip (Watanabe #2) back on my lever it broke. Not sure what happened... The interesting thing was that when I went to my tip bag to get another one I came across an old Hale #2 tip that I hadn't realized I had. I have some Hale tips but they're newer ones and this one looked older. Anyway, I put it on and wow I liked it! Good 'ol Hale.

Never broke a tip in over 30 years..... (looking for some wood to knock!)

Ron Koval

Nor have I. I never take the tips off the heads, I just get a head for each tip, and a tip for each head.

Only tip I ever broke was a no name junk one on my first lever. Never had it happen to a Watanabe, and I do change tips on different heads from time to time.

Maybe it was a sign from the tuning Gods so you could find that old Hale again.

Of course not! Those old tips were very good quality. I have some Hale tips from 1960 (with original invoice) that are holding up just fine. It's the more recent tips that have all kinds of problems.

I had several tips break in succession some years ago. In the end it was determined that a batch was not heat treated.

That's the problem fellers. That's what Scott did.... He's been using it as a "hammer!" Tee hee!

Scott,

Sorry to hear about this.

Inquiring minds would like to know: where exactly did the Watanabe #2 break? Did it happen while torquing the tip to the head?

It was on a very hard pinblock , a new piano ?

Do you use much back and forth motion ?

When I was nudging more I broke a shaft, the one of a very old tuning lever , I was really sorry.

When tuning with very tight pins, the metal have to accept a lot of fatigue. Never broke a tip, but I dont have the Watanabe, my lever is made by (for ?) Yamaha, I thought for some time that Watanabe was producing those levers, as they sell them, but I doubt of it, actually.


PS torquing the tip would not break it, in my opinion, we dont need to torque them much, it get torqued enough while tuning.

You may not have experienced tight pins, some new pianos are almost non tuneable because of that.

Yep, I was putting it on, not tuning. It cracked on the "business" end (not the threaded end). I usually torque it down pretty good but this time something slipped and I think that's what did it. I suppose I put some side pressure on it that it wasn't designed to take.

You mean I can't use that thing to pound pins back in?!

Yep, that was my thought too... What added to that was the fact that I didn't know where it came from.