Hello!  I own a clock restoration business, my main focus is the
restoration of Black Forest clocks.  This includes but is not limited
to organ clocks, trumpeter clocks, cuckoo clocks and all other
mechanical clocks.

I also have a Verbena Toy barrel piano by Reig.  Several examples of
these toy pianos that I have seen have suffered from missing tone rods
and the deterioration of the song changing snail.  The example I own
only had 4 original tone rods present.  I am not sure what material the
original tone rods were made from, but a lot of them are obviously too
weak to withstand the blows from the plastic hammers.  I have since
replaced all the tone rods in my piano.

Since I restore clocks I have access to replacement chime rods used in
grandfather clocks.  I installed 15 copper rods, the same rods used in
grandfather clocks, and tuned them.  The results came out much better
than I had expected.  The copper rods are larger in diameter and are
much more resilient.  This piano has been an on-going restoration
process.  Next, I will be working on making a new song changing snail.

Thanks!
Neal Travis
ticktock19852004@yahoo.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]