With the piano fully strung, it now needs to be brought up up pitch. Quite a gradual process on this piano, as various parts of the stringing mechanism need to settle down (sometimes helped a little with some carefully placed taps from a hammer + drift) before the tuning can stabilise.

My Accu-Tuner IV is being used in its most basic form here – as a tone generator, with a foot switch to increment/decrement the tone as I change notes.

I needed rather more stringing tools than usual for this piano! I usually use just one pair of pliers for a start…

The piano is now fully strung, and will have muting blocks (to damp the non-speaking part of the string between the tuning screws and the “capo” bar) fitted later today before the task of bringing the piano up to pitch begins.

The first of the new bass strings is being fitted to the Brinsmead, and also this beautifully crafted new tuning screw. I’m very thankful to a good friend of mine for all the effort he put into making this part for me. (And he’ll be very pleased to hear it fitted perfectly, and was a joy to work with!)

Whilst the Brinsmead stringing system is very stable, it is a LOT more fiddly to work with than the design used on most pianos… (I have very sore hands at the moment!) In a few days, I’ll publish a series of pictures describing the stringing process.

6 notes done, 82 to go… The brass retaining caps on the Brinsmead tuning system.

A fine game played slowly….! The screw thread tuning system (known on upright pianos as a “top tuner” – because the threads point straight up) is very stable, but rather tricky to work with at the stringing stage.

Also note the newly capped treble bridge.

Life became very busy recently! Piano work has continued, but it’s been far too long since I updated my website… My current piano is an 1880 Brinsmead grand piano, finished in burr walnut.