Piano String Replacement

This video is going to be demonstrating how to replace string in a piano. I've set up a jig that has been used for demonstration purposes, it's not an exact piano, but we'll show the process of how to replace a string. There's a couple different ways, if you've got a broken string you can leave the pins in the piano or you can take them out but the first way I'm going to show you is, if the pins are out of the piano out of the pin block, and putting the string on the pin, and then putting it into the pin block. What we've got here is a piece of pin block with a couple of holes drilled for tuning pins. Over here on this end, and then at the other end I've got a hitch pin right here to wrap the the string around. We're going to start her. I've got a regular tuning pin here and here I have some piano wire, which we sell both the tuning pins and the piano wire in our online store. This tool here is a tuning pin coil maker. This is a good one for coiling the wire onto the tuning pin when the pin is outside the piano. It really doesn't work if the pin is in the piano and you'll see why. You'll put the tuning pin in the hole. There's a set screw right here that the wire is going to be pushing against as it wraps around the tuning pin. What you'll do is, you slide the wire into the hole for the tuning pin and then set the wire against the set screw and then pull the end of the wire so that it just barely sticks out of the end, of the side of the tuning pin, just to slide them out and once you've got that set there, this is a tuning pin crank, which is probably the best tool to use for this. Now, what I'm going to do is, with the crank on the end of the tuning pin, and then I'm going to turn it. I'm going to put about two and a half coils, okay, so that's one, two, and about two and a half coils on the tuning pin. Then I'm going to kind of hold the wire there as I take the tuning pin out, take it off of the stringing crank, and then I'll set the wire into the hole. This is a tuning pin punch. That's a good thing, if you pound right on the end of the tuning pin, doesn't always work so good, so we use a tuning pin punch, and we'll put that, pound that tuning pin into the hole. You won't want to go all the way because you want some room to be able to coil and then, of course, the bottom of the coil should be a little bit away from the plate, and put it in most of the way, and then what I'm going to do here then is wrap the wrap the wire. I'll pull it tight before I wrap the wire and I'll wrap that around the hitch pin that I've got, or the mock hitch pin that I've got here. Then I'll pull enough wire out, and what I'll do is, I'm going to cut off extra because I want to make sure I don't run short. So, you generally want about three inches, and I'll show you how you measure that but I'm going to go more than 3 inches just to make sure I've got enough here. So, I'll cut that off, and I've gone more than three inches, but now I'm going to take my stainless steel rule here, and I'm going to measure three inches beyond, pulling the wire tight, I'm going to go three inches beyond the tuning pin hole. So there I've got three inches. I'm just going to hold that with my finger. I need to cut it off, and it doesn't have to be an exact science but if you're at least pretty close, that will give you about three coils on the end of the, three coils on the tuning pin, when all is said and done So, cut that off, then what I'm going to do is take my other tuning pin and again I'll take the coil maker here, put the tuning pin in, and again, put it through the hole pull the wire so that it's just barely sticking out the end of the other side of the hole and then the wire, up against the set screw, look, and you want to make sure the wire goes underneath the new coils, go underneath and again, about two and a half turns, put that whole pin punch Only thing that we have to do yet here is tighten this, tighten these up. Now, you want to make sure your coils are nice and straight and I can use a tuning hammer for tightening the pins. What I've got here is this, is a star tip ratchet socket. It's got the star tip at the end to fit the tuning pins. You can't use, or not very well, you can't use a regular ratchet socket because there's not ones that would fit the tapered tuning pins, but this one's designed, and we sell these in our online store also that fit over the ends of them on the tuning pin. So what I'm going to do here is just tighten these up a little bit, and as I tighten them I'm going to use this is a coil lifter and string spacer. On one end it's got the end to hold up the the coil, lift the coil. The other end is a string spacer. It's got three notches to space the three strings of the note. So I'm going to kind of hold those coils up as I tighten that. I'm not going to go all the way. What you want to get, and again, you want to make sure your, sometimes, if you're pushing up too much on your coils the wire is going to want to go back up around, and then, as we get close, there's a little becket here that you just want to push in with some pliers to make sure that the becket is nice and tight, so tightening that until it's mostly tight, and then I'll go back and do the other side. Tighten the becket on that one, and again getting those coils nice and tight. This is kind of a crucial thing. So there we go.That's putting a string in of course, where it wraps around the hitch-pin, and put it in, and then if because we didn't pound them in all the way, you want to determine how close you want to get the coils to the plate, and then you can go back and pound them in further, and then once they're right where they should be, they'd be able to fine tune them. There you are, with a newly installed string.