•Hi All, I'm going to put in my two cents on this topic... When does two cents really mean something? When you cannot change the tuning of a piano by two cents and know it will stay in tune... Regarding Bill Mackin's question about whether or not adding humidity would swell a pin block enough to mak...

•Hello Gordon, I hope these tips may be helpful. Please continue to pass along your experiences, as I'm always grateful to learn. One of the advantages of hide glue is that after it sets, it shrinks in drying. (People sometimes confuse "set" and "dry" in terms of gluing, and fail due to misunderstan...

•I'm well out of my depth here as both a HVAC engineer and organ expert. I'm wondering if this is a crazy idea. Fairground organs often seem to have problems with intonation on hot days. In relatively constant climates like England this is an occasional irritation on days with exceptional weather, b...

•[ Roger Wiegand wrote in 051008 MMDigest: > Would there be other unintended consequences of blowing cold air > into a warm pipe? Would it actually solve the intonation problem? I think it would cause many more intonation problems. Before playing, the pipes are sitting there, filled with the ambient...

•I have not researched the plusses and minuses of the various paper types out there for roll paper. I know that there has been a fair amount of research and experimentation of what makes the best roll paper over the years. There have been several paper types that roll producers have settled on that ...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- I am currently testing a batch of Ecsaine on a Chickering "Brown" grand piano action of the 1880s, to replace the huge amount of original buckskin. The Ecsaine is more uniform, impervious (for now) to humidity changes, very hard to stretch, etc. ...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- Hello fellow mechanical music lovers! I have many old table-top organs that I would like to sell, including a cob organ, a Celestina 20-note paper roll organ and an old bird organ (serinette). I now live in Costa Rica and the humidity is a killer...

•You didn't mention what you did to correct the problem. Perhaps you adjusted the poppet upwards to compensate for the shrunken pouches. That would seem to take care of the matter if the pouches are as shrunk as they are going to get. However, if the pouches were taut and had no upward or downward p...

•I am enjoying the Christmas break playing my new 1900 Weber grand piano. I am now reading that our new piano and our new house may be incompatible. The great room where the piano has set for six months has a concrete floor with radiant heat. Other than putting a humidistat in the room near the pian...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- Another possibility...! It was very interesting to see all respondents to the original question assuming that the effect of under floor or in-floor heating would immediately lead to dryness. This is not always the case though. A friend of mine ha...

•I too was worried about the lifetimes of CDROM media since I use this media for archival storage. There is a good article about it at www.itl.nist.gov/div895/gipwog/StabilityStudy.pdf I went looking for "good" CDROMs and discovered that it is difficult to find out exactly what the dye used in most ...

•British Aeolian rolls didn't use waxed paper. Indeed, hardly anybody did until modern days -- set fire to a scrap and you'll soon spot the difference between the paraffin-waxed paper and the untreated stuff! What Aeolian used was "machine glazed" paper, where the back has a shiny surface arrived at...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- The roll-scanning, roll-preservation discussion brings up an interesting question for me as a novice in this hobby: What _is_ the best way to store rolls, anyway? In the dark? Temperature: 70-75 degrees? Humidity: 40-60 percent RH? Horizontal, I ...

•Thanks to Spencer Chase for the link to the post on the 1911 music roll standards. It did answer all but one of my questions on spool ends. Obviously all spool ends by all manufacturers were to adhere to these standards. My last question, which remains unanswered, concerns the slip fit of the left ...

•There is a possibility that hot animal glue may be banned through controls over infectious proteins. Already most traditional methods of tanning are banned because of the noxious and toxic chemicals previously used (including, up to WW2, I kid you not, dog sh*t). Traditional hot glues were used mai...

•[ Ref. John A. Tuttle's article in 070214 MMDigest ] You say that the microwave method worked on the smaller pieces. You also say you are using freezing on the larger pieces, I assume because they won't fit in the microwave. If freezing does not work, here is one suggestion: Hook up the output of a...

•Mark Kinsler wrote in the 070328 MMDigest about a book, written by J.E. Gordon: "One of his (J.E.G.) investigations revealed that the plywood being used to construct aircraft had been rendered un-glue-able because it had been rolled with hot, smooth metal rollers during its manufacture. This closed...

•On p. 89 of my book, Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding, I made this statement: Most ordinary inside valves should have .040" travel, measured at the stem, although various manufacturers made other recommendations ranging from .028" (Simplex), to .047" or 3/64" (Baldwin), to .062" or 1/16" (Auto...

•Here in New England it is not uncommon for later (viz. most) Seeburg instruments to play weakly or quit altogether during the winter months. Cold air cannot hold much moisture, and this is the same air that circulates into buildings and is heated, causing wooden parts to dry out and shrink. The ret...

•Michael Lushbaugh in the 080208 MMD recites a list of problems with his piano that are very similar to the ones I had with my 1906 Melville Clark Apollo. I acquired this piano about six months ago in a restored state, but not assembled. When I reassembled it, it played perfectly. But as Fall set in...