Still working on the piano...

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Our lodger (who is very interested in engineering) and I have been having an interesting time figuring out whether we could improve the state of the piano. I wrote before about replacing the check tapes by gluing on new ones… well he was afraid that wouldn’t last and wouldn’t provide enough flexibility, so we looked for alternative approaches. The ‘authentic’ way to replace them would apparently be to heat up the glue, remove the jacks from their holes, then replace the straps by pushing into the holes and gluing the jacks in place, the same way as the originals. But we were a bit afraid we might cause damage by heating everything up – or even set fire to the piano! Another idea was to stitch the new tapes onto the old ones – in the cases of broken tapes, it seems to be just the little leather tab at the end that has come off. I was sceptical that I could get close enough to the tape to sew it with the sewing machine, with the hammer and jack still attached to the tape and getting in the way. Another option was to buy some straps with some sort of buckles from some Chinese site. I looked at the photos but I just couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to buckle onto. And then we’d have to wait weeks for them to arrive. And I wasn’t sure I trusted what we would get from some random internet site on the other side of the world. And anyway I have bought a set of straps already so I intend to use those! Finally there was the suggestion to do something with zip ties… I decided eventually to try plan B but to sew them by hand. Only a few are actually broken and if it wasn’t successful then the original tapes are still there so we could try something different instead. So far I’ve done the three broken ones so we’ll see how that goes. The most difficult part is making sure the length from the little pin hole to the base of the jack stem is exactly the same. And then getting the little tab back onto its pin. Wish me luck! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.