Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Fried Chicken Syndrome

Well I just installed 240 strings and tuning pins, which been working out just fine.

I had ten more bass strings to go then, my daughter walks in and says "dad, would you like a piece of fried chicken" I said "yes thanks"

Well I had on cotton gloves for the stringing job.

Guess what happened next?

I put the next string in and thought "why is the pin so loose and jumpy?"

Then I realized, "OH CRAP" OIL!

Any ideas what I should now?

Best thing you can do is get some waffles to go with that chicken

Rob

Methyl Hydrate is a good cleaner.

My worry would be any cleaner thinning the oil enough to let it migrate to near by pins.

Are you re-stringing a Bösendorfer Imperial Grand? Or are you stringing us along, or???

Yes I'm serious.

After I ate the chicken I drove the next pin in not realizing I got oil on my gloves.

I then went to put some tension on the string I found the pin was unbelievably jumpy and sounded like a duck call.

My wife has been saying that fried food is no good for me.

It's only one pin?

You could try the methyl hydrate.

But if you are afraid that might help the oil migrate as was posted above, you could just try using powdered rosin on the pin and see if that corrects the problem.

If worse come to worse, you could just drill this one hole out, insert a plug from pinblock material, and then re-drill the hole for the pin.

I wouldn’t worry too much about migration. Methyl evaporates so quickly it will draw the oil away from the material and leave most on the rag or Q tip.

It is only when using a brush the oil will be driven deeper into the materials. The idea is the swab rather than scrub.

In my post I was asking if you were serious about 240 strings done, 10 to go. That would be 250 strings. Very, very few pianos have that many, certainly not a baby grand. The correct number is probably around 190.

Now I'll have to go count strings on a couple og the baby grands I have.

Darn math.

My math may have a mistake but I figure 231 pins from the photo. 27 bass with 4 trichords, the remainder 61 trichords.

Your piano has 228 strings.

228 On this 5' 3" Kimball

Well should I do something now Or wait to see if it hold good enough?

Are you trying to get any of us to admit we have done something like this?

Btw, from the pic you provided, it looks like you do nice, neat, professional work

(Other than the fried chicken )

It's the new Kimbal-KFC. A finger lickin' good piano.

Methyl Hydrate is the logical choice.

You could use denatured alcohol dribbled into the hole with an eye dropper while a clean rag is stuffed in to slide back and forth to absorb the oil. Then use thin super glue to tighten the hole back up since removing the pin will loosen the fit. Of course don't dribble any on any finished surfaces!

Greetings,
What I would do would be to pull the pin, then take a an absorbent material like a twisted strip of flannel that fits snugly in the hole, and with it wetted with lacquer thinner on the leading end, I would pull it through the hole so that the first three or four inches of soaked thinner are followed by a foot or so of dry flannel. Clean the pin, perhaps dust with rosin, or not. and redrive the pin. Most of the oil from the gloves is on the pin, you didn't put enough down the hole to soak the pinblock for the length of the pin. There is not enough to migrate and infect the rest of the block.

The worst case scenario is to drill a 3/8 hole through the block, glue in a pair of Falconwood or Delignite plugs, and red rill. It has happened to a lot of us and isn't really a big deal. We bought a D in 1980 at the school. Two years later, A1 would't hold. Upon removal, it was found that the hole in the block was oval because the hole had been drilled hard next to the plate and the pin had been held by metal on metal for the first year or so before it began grinding some torque away.

No way was I going to risk a $12 bass string (that is what Mapes was charging then), on an iffy pin, again, so I plugged it and repined. It held for 20 years, and was still tight when the block was replaced.

I do my best work when I don't eat when stringing, or talk, or drink coffee, or make appointments, or anything but

wire/cut/feed/bend/twist/hammer/lift/hammer/chip/wire/cut/feed/bend/twist/hammer/lift/hammer/chip/wire/cut/feed/bend/twist/hammer/lift/hammer/chip/wire/cut/feed/bend/twist/hammer/lift/hammer/chip/wire/cut/feed/bend/twist/hammer/lift/hammer/chip/wire/cut/feed/bend/twist/hammer/lift/hammer/chip/

The older I get, the more I appreciate the opportunity to have several hours in which I can just work, uninterruptedly. Stringing is perhaps the most beautiful escape in my shop, as the pattern is clear, Measurable progress comes with steadily mounting tension, fresh felt, polished bits and pieces, strings pitched for the first time, the count of pins, holes, and hitches lock-stepping across the afternoon, the reward for good procedure and technique immediate in the form of job satisfaction with every pin. There is a feeling of wealth that comes from coils of wire and bass strings waiting next to the box of tuning pins as they get pounded into their eternal life.

Just no way to work the fried chicken into it, sorry.
Regards,

Red rill! Repined! Interesting spellchecker choices!

I can't speak as a pro piano tech because I am strictly a DIYer, but I can speak from 35 years in the automotive repair industry. We frequently have to degrease all kinds of things. Sit in somebody's fuzzy tan cloth seats and you didn't realize there was a wad of black wheel bearing grease on your pants? Ooooops! "Brake cleaning' solvent" will degrease damn near anything. I prefer the less toxic newer formula that is hexane based over the old toxic perchloroethelyne (sp??) formula. I would flood the hole with brake cleaner and blow it out with compressed air and it will be bone-dry afterwards. If you really want to worry about it, do that twice. Oil sinks more deeply and quickly into soft cloth upholstery than into wood and brake cleaner leaves not a trace.

Don't panic.