Please let us know how your violin pin GEQA stuff works. I have only used talc and paper shims. Always successful. But it’s always good to have a Plan B.
Frank Hubbard seemed to get away with paper shims. If the holes are larger, try wood planer shavings?
| KeithWomer
August 26 |
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Please let us know how your violin pin GEQA stuff works. I have only used talc and paper shims. Always successful. But it’s always good to have a Plan B.
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| JacquesRéelle TwM
August 26 |
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Back to this thread! In the workshop now: a Dowd double, restrung by Don Angle in 2002 as noted inside. Talc on pins as said, very useful info. Came from Paris, has always lived in Provence, where it’s rather dryer. Much played. So, some of the pins turn by themselves now. Customer wants a restring…
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Wolfgang G. Knauss
Theodore von Karman Professor of
Aeronautics and Applied Mechanics, emeritus
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena CA 91001
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I’m recommending against it. It’s for wood on wood for a start, and the long term effects on metal may be unknown. At the very least, it’s unheard of for this application. If it was suitable piano makers would use it, and they don’t. Also, peg paste or peg soap as it can be called is for a much lower tension pull situation.
You mean Wirbelseife; Seife is soap in German. Wirble relates to something that turns, twists (except in the case of the human spine: =vertebra).
| andro Andrew Bernard
August 26 |
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As a violin player as well as harpsichord player/maker I never heard of
anybody using violin peg soap on a harpsichord. For violins it’s for
making the tuning smoother when the pegs stick, due to inevitable wear
or bad taper fitting and mostly because of weather conditions, etc. A
harpsichord tuning pin will turn nicely and stay put if it fits the hole
properly. No need for this.As an aside, peg soap has been made by various manufacturers since the
19c but the recipes are very closely guarded trade secrets. I read that
only two people at Hills knew the formula. Nobody really knows what is
in them. There’s quite a lot of discussion about this mystery on violin
forums. Most likely they are a type of rosin combined with chalk. It’s
very interesting stuff because it has to perform two contradictory
functions at once - allow the peg to turn easily, and yet then make it
grip tight when in position. I find it fascinating. I use the Götz
Wirbelsiefe.
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August 26 |
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Back to this thread! In the workshop now: a Dowd double, restrung by Don Angle in 2002 as noted inside. Talc on pins as said, very useful info. Came from Paris, has always lived in Provence, where it’s rather dryer. Much played. So, some of the pins turn by themselves now. Customer wants a restring…
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Wolfgang G. Knauss
Theodore von Karman Professor of
Aeronautics and Applied Mechanics, emeritus
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena CA 91001
626 395 4524 Phone — Office
626 798 3793 Phone — Home
626 797 0405 Fax — Home
My misreading of the label as a person who does not speak German! At least I managed to get ‘Götz’ right with the diacritic mark. 
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This has sort of drifted off-topic, but not worth starting a new thread over. I was mis-remembering about the composition of peg soap being highly secret. It’s not the Hills peg soap but the famous Hills Violin Cleaning Polish that was kept so secret, even the workers at Hills were not allowed to know what was in it. Silly me. Still, it’s hard to find out what is in commercial peg paste. The Götz has graphite and probably chalk. Others may have rosin without beeswax but with soap of some kind. I still find it intriguing that two mutually contradictory slip-stick compounds work so well.
| wgk Wolfgang Knauss
August 26 |
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Frank Hubbard seemed to get away with paper shims. If the holes are larger, try wood planer shavings?
Among violin repairers, spiral bushings are increasingly used.
A shaving of suitable wood, taken with a plane, is coated with thin glue, wrapped tightly around a suitable mandrel (e.g., of nylon or metal) or the wooden peg itself (waxed to prevent adhesion), and pressed into the conoidal hole.
When the glue is dry, any excess wood is trimmed flush and the reduced hole can be reamed, if necessary.
The peghole is, in effect, lined with a truncated cone of very thin plywood.
Because the bushing is compressed in use, only a little glue is needed to secure and integrate it.
Some violin repairers prefer to use brown paper or other sheet material.
It should be possible to adapt this method to suit most kinds of harpsichord or clavichord wrest pin, and all except the most severe wear to the surrounding wood.
Thank you all,
I’ve seen that GEWA peg paste can slip if too much on the metal pin, (two swipes, one is enough) thus the balance between stick and slip is towards slip. Quatour pegs are more of a nuisance if they get stuck than if they slip, whence they can be pushed in, unless the hole through which the string goes is up against the inner wall and the string prevents further push…Agree with AB about the lesser tensions involved as well as the wood on wood purpose. Clearly not meant for this. I tried dry bar soap once, made for starts ‘n’ jumps, not good.
Now I’ve decided, given the discrepancies in diametre, to remove each pin into a plank with numbered holes, and not just throw them into a box and trust them to be equal. Each hole will have thus adjusted to each pin and go back to it’s original place, the slippy ones have been listed for me by the owner, that helps!.. A shim of wood, why not? I’ve so far always been ok with brown papern glue side out or fine sandpaper, grit out. I think it’s the talc that made em slip, plus very frequent tuning, in itself a Good Thing. The pins are smooth, no thread, thus wear to the wp is minimal anyway.
Here’s a kick to the anthill: I’ve been cruising through Jahn’s website and found Pin-Tite! Whaddya think y’all? Applied with the pin and string in place though.
A restorer of pianos has suggested to use a piano makers trick: slow setting Cyanoacrylate glue to line the hole. Works in pianos apparently. Since the pinblock is laminated as piano ones are, perhaps I’ll try one or two in the worst cases. Perhaps glue the wood bushings where 5 mm pins were put with CA glue.
Q: so if Dowd laminated his bentsides, what glue? Boatbuilders; the infamous Cascamite? As far as I understand vinyl or even yellow Titebond would creep, and to do this hot would a great challenge. I bend hot n steamy n solid.
Merci!
TM
04870 St Michel l’Observatoire
(33) 04 92 76 60 81
| alvisezuani Lewis Jones
August 26 |
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August 26 |
- | - |
Frank Hubbard seemed to get away with paper shims. If the holes are larger, try wood planer shavings?
Among violin repairers, spiral bushings are increasingly used.
A shaving of suitable wood, taken with a plane, is coated with thin glue, wrapped tightly around a suitable mandrel (e.g., of nylon or metal) or the wooden peg itself (waxed to prevent adhesion), and pressed into the conoidal hole.
When the glue is dry, any excess wood is trimmed flush and the reduced hole can be reamed, if necessary.
The peghole is, in effect, lined with a truncated cone of very thin plywood.
Because the bushing is compressed in use, only a little glue is needed to secure and integrate it.
Some violin repairers prefer to use brown paper or other sheet material.
It should be possible to adapt this method to suit most kinds of harpsichord or clavichord wrest pin, and all except the most severe wear to the surrounding wood.
Le 26/08/2022 19:40, TwM via The Jackrail écrit :
[JacquesRéelle] JacquesRéelle
https://jackrail.space/u/jacquesréelle TwM
August 26Q: so if Dowd laminated his bentsides, what glue? Boatbuilders; the
infamous Cascamite? As far as I understand vinyl or even yellow
Titebond would creep, and to do this hot would a great challenge. I
bend hot n steamy n solid.
The maker I knew who worked for years at Dowd’s (Paris) before opening
his own workshop is unfortunately no longer with us, so no further
questions can be asked. But from what I’ve heard in the past I don’t
think it would have been anything else than a modern PVA glue, if he
made they laminated boards themselves, which I doubt. This maker claimed
to do everything as it was done by Von Nagel, and he bought his
laminated planks (and didn’t use anything but PVA glue). That being
said, I don’t think a laminated bentside would be prone to creeping,
given that the tension is perpendicular to the creeping direction.
Do you put the sandpaper side toward the pin or the paper side toward the pin?
I’ve never used sandpaper on piano or harpsichord.
To my recollection, when using sandpaper to shim a piano tuning pin, the sand was put to the outside.
For a harpsichord I’d use a slip of brown gummed paper, gum outside, or just a tube of any fairly strong paper (not newsprint).
To start, not a complete tube, just a tapered strip that inserts into the hole. If that’s not enough, use a larger bit of paper.
Ed
When I mentioned sandpaper, I meant to say fine wet and dry, maybe 400 grit. The paper base for that is quite thin. The abrasive side goes out so as to provide a bit more grip. Cut a thin strip. say 4mm wide. That’s all you need. Put pin in hole with strip. Then if you pull he excess above it just tears off neatly and its more or less invisible.
I agree substantially with Ed. Just a tapered strip will do the job. You can bend over one end to help it stay in place while you put the pin back in.
I would advise against sandpaper, and especially against pointing the sand side outward. As you continue to tune the harpsichord over time, you will gradually ream the pin hole wider. One day, the pin will not set anymore,
Don Angle (I believe) advised me to use a cut-down business card for the shim, and it works quite well. Don used baby powder (talc), which I also use. It was amusing to see him slap up a cloud of talc dust (like Lebron James), with the biggest goofy smile on his face showing how much he relished what he was about to do.
When I visited Bill Dowd in Cambridge in the '70s, I told him I had read somewhere (the Zuckerbook?) that he used plywood for his case bottoms and asked him if he was still doing that. He said he had switched to solid wood. I’ve never heard of plywood being used for the other parts of the case. All I can tell you is that the instrument is quite stable–Dowd was well known for that.
@jmccarty3 how is that related to this topic exactly? There does seem to be some thread drift last year, but I don’t quite follow how bottoms are related to pins.