Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Best coil lifting / tightening tool

I am new to the art of piano tech, but a friend who is an experienced tech is teaching and helping me step by step. (BTW while I knew that a piano was complicated, I did not know how complicated it is to make a piano both play great and sound great. Those of you who can transform a piano into such a state are truly very talented.) One thing I have been learning and enjoying is putting in new strings. However, my main struggle is to make nice tight coils. It seems that sometimes it takes me more time to make a nice coil than it does for me to put in the pin, and measure, cut, and install the string. My teacher has a couple of coil tools, but they are challenging to use on quite a few of the pins. I tried to design my own coil tool. It would take a while to explain it, but in short, I made a two piece tool with one part being the "claw" that goes around the tuning pin and the other part being a lever that goes through the first piece to lift the "claw" up hopefully making a tight coil. But so far it does not work very well. Maybe I can refine the design, but even if I refine it, I already can see that it will not be "the answer" - at best it will be an answer in some situations. Maybe making good tight coils will become easy with more practice (I have done 200 - 300 strings so far), but in the meantime I am looking for a better tool. I envision some type of pliers in which one half of the pliers grips the bottom of the coil and the other part goes on top of the tuning pin and as you squeeze, the coil is pulled up nice and tight. However, google searches have not yet revealed this wonderful tool to me.

My question: What is the best coil lifting / tightening tool that you experts know of?

P. S. If you have any trade secrets that you want to share, that would also be fine.

Schaff sells a slide handle coil tightener that works reasonably well if you grind down the corners so it fits between the other tuning pins, and leave enough room at the bottom of the pin to get the tool in. Otherwise, my best advice is to be careful when you are winding the coil. Wind the coil a little more than just enough to get to the tuning pin hole, so you have unwind it a little before the pin will fit in the hole, or the becket will fit in the eye of the pin, depending on whether you are replacing the tuning pin or not. This will encourage the coil to go into place the way you originally wound it. Lift the coil as you tighten the tuning pin: this is one of the times a third arm would come in handy, but most of us are not so equipped.

Many of my students have difficulty, but after 200 - 300, you shouldn't. You must be doing something wrong.

Here are some "tricks" that may make the job easier.

There are two ways to create a coil. 1) Off the pin and 2) on the pin.

1) Off the pin means you use a coil maker to create the coil, then pop it off the coil making pin and put it onto the pin that's in the piano.

This technique works well if you've taken extra care to keep the coils tight when making the coil in the coil maker. Then when the string is on the piano, there is not much messing around with it.

There is a description of how to make your own coil maker in the Reblitz text. I make my own that also has modifications for making the single string loops and even bass string loops.

2) On the pin. With this technique, you bend the end of the string and slide it into the pin, then turn the pin in the piano and produce the coil that way. It is a little more tricky because you have to guide the string so the coils are tight.

In both cases, the coils will not be tight without some coaxing. You can use a coil lifter or a screwdriver, but there is a trick to getting the coils tight and staying where you put them.

Steps to get tight coils:
1) Tighten up the string. Do not worry about the tightness of the coils yet. Just get the string to, what I call, the "coil making" tension. This is the tension that will allow you to move the coil with your preferred tool, and the coils will stay where you put them.

This is, of course, much looser than the final tension at pitch.

Too loose and the coils will spring back to where they were. Too tight and you will not be able to move the coils.

2) If the tension is too loose or too tight, just crack the pin a tiny bit in the desired direction and try moving the coil again. When it moves and stays where you put it, you're ready to go to work.

3) Put your tool under the coils and lift. Then tap down on the top of the coils. With this technique, you can get them really snug and tight, and even align the coils relative to the pin hole. Some technicians are really particular and like the exit pin hole to be half covered by the string.

[img]http://www.howtotunepianos.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pin-coil.bmp[/img]

(Sorry, it looks like the IMG command is not working right. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong? You can just click on it anyway.)

Good luck. Please subscribe to my blog http://howtotunepianos.com. I will eventually post a video of me making a coil if you like.

Getting them coils just right is not easy but once learned, it is one of the signs of a real pro, one who cares.

Let me be the first one to thank you both, BDB and Cerisano, for an excellent and informative answers; and taking the time to help us newbies.




Herr Weiss

Thanks so much (both of you) for your comments. I have been doing much of what you said, but it is still helpful. I so far have been making the coils directly on the pins instead of using a coil winder. I think that I will try a winder. Of course it is harder with 18 - 20 gauge wire than lighter gauge. The center pin is usually the worse to do. Also, being a perfectionist, I want the coils tight and lifted exactly to the tuning pin hole (and all of the beckets also similarly positioned). It is not hard to make a tight coil tapping the coil down, but putting it right at the tuning pin hole, especially if the wire wants to loop the pin at an angle instead of flat parallel loops, is what I struggle with. I will keep practicing and working at it. My tech friend is letting me restring a wonderful 1917 5'2" Weber grand this week.

I use a combination of 2 or 3 tools depending on the situation. The standard claw type lifters being sold are often too thick and don't give enough room between pins for easy access. I carefully grind these down for more clearance and I coat the underside and tips of it with a thin layer of liquid rubber (electrical insulating liquid). This rubber helps prevent those encircling marks,chips and scratches seen on the plate which inexperienced techs often do (and sometimes some pros by accidental slip).

String hook to initially close the coil enough to get a lifter under it when first winding. As soon as the string pinches with friction, I switch to the coil lifter, back off the pin to get the coil closed and retighten just enough to hold it. Sometimes the top of the coil needs to be tapped down opposite the becket entrance hole and I use a small brass flat blade screwdriver type tool for that.

I avoid marks on the plate by lifting, rather than prying.

I have posted this before, but this is how I modify the Schaff 3101 coil tool tip:



I remove the area in red.

Thanks!