Day 67 –Monday, December 13 – Slipping...slipping...and slipping again:

Goals: Continue restringing

Music: Andrew Hill’s “Point of Departure”.

Did a couple more strings – not bad for a working week night It’s getting hard(er) now because the strings are stretching to up to six or seven feet in total length. It takes serious concentration and focus to keep a handle on the wire ends, especially when cutting. I also have some concern about there being enough wire to complete the project. Individual notes eat up a lot more wire when you’ve got to run seven foot lengths instead of ten or fifteen inches.

Now that I’m about halfway through, I started to wonder: will the piano be tunable? I tried to pluck the strings to at least see if they continue to go up in tone as you pluck them from left to right. As I did so, I found that most were doing fine as far as a semblance of accurate tonal direction, except for one. So I tightened and plucked and no change. So I tightened again and noticed that as soon as I pulled the tuning wrench off, it slipped back. There it was: my first un-tunable string. As I understand it, my options for making this string tunable are many:

1) Use a bushing

2) Use a chemical that expands the wood

3) Use a larger pin

I have just a little leeway at this point, so I plan to start by seeing if I can drive the pin deeper and get it to catch before it pulls the string too low. I figure this is a good gamble to make, since it’s not working right now as is. I might just save myself having to install a bushing or messing with chemicals.

I made some inquiries to my group of “consultants” as to what they recommend. Fortunately, because it is only one string, it shouldn’t hold me up too much. (In fact, I plan to do some more work on the piano tonight.)

Again, wish me luck.