Making a piano tuning lever

[Matty F]

A piano tuning lever is basically like a small socket spanner with a big lever on it. They can cost up to US$700, and the cheap ones are useless.

I wish to make one. It will be much stronger than the commercial ones so it won't twist and flex like they do. It will have a square hole so it doesn't slip or damage the pins.

The hard part is to make a square hole. I think I will make a tapered steel pin, drill a round hole in a steel rod and put it in the forge until it's red hot and hammer it around the pin. Attaching a handle will be easy. Or I may as well bend the rod in the forge too.

When I tune my piano I won't be using this "equal temperament" rubbish or any electronic devices! I want to tune it the way Mozart or Bach would have wanted.

Any better suggestions for making a tapered square hole in steel? I have access to a milling machine, drill press, lathe, welder and forge, and lots of files.

[brass monkey]

You realise that you need to be blind to tune a piano ;)

[Andrew Gabriel]

Well, Bach wrote the 48 preludes and fugues to celebrate the arrival of equal temperament, which made all the major and minor keys usable. Prior to that, many of the major and minor keys were pretty unusable because it was not possible to tune an instrument to sound in-tune for all keys. (OTOH, a few keys could sound more in-tune than with equal temperament.)

[charles]

Why so expensive? A harp tuning key - basically the same - is under £20.

surely it was Bach who propounded "equal temperament" and Mozart came later?

[Thomas Prufer]

I'd probably file it, going all the way through, then harden.

Industrially, the way to do it is called "broaching"... not useful to you, I'd think, but have a look anyway.

Thomas Prufer

[Brian Gaff]

Seems a bit expensive, I'd have though if you could come up with something that works well and is not too hard to make you could undercut the competition and make some money. As for the methodology of tuning pianos, well I am no musitian, but I saw a person trying to do it once with electronic gizmos and the result was not pleasing to the ear, sounded very kind of dull afterwards, so maybe its the slight errors that make pianos have character.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

That is utter rubbish. In fact there are now a diminishing number of blind piano tuners as witnessed by the RNIB not running the course some years any more. No I cannot tune anything but I know what sounds nice and what does not.. Brian

[Matty F]

[Pete]

[Roger Mills]

Maybe it's sufficient just to use a blind tapered square hole in the tuning lever?

[Roger Mills]

A lot of automotive tools have tapered square holes - like drain plug removers and brake adjusters. Have you thought of trying to adapt one of those - maybe grinding off the unwanted bits to avoid fouling the adjacent pins?

Just a thought . . . maybe tuning levers *need* to be softer than the pins so that it's the lever which wears (and can be replaced) and not the pins. Once you've rounded a pin, you're stuffed!

In the past, I've had a go at re-tuning one or two duff notes on a piano (not the whole thing!) and it's *not* that easy. Watching piano tuners at work, there's definitely a black art in knowing by how much to over-tighten and then back off - so as to have the hysteresis in the right direction so that the tuning stays put. Unlike a violin etc., you've also got 2 or 3 strings per note, which all have to be in unison.

As I'm sure you know, if you tune it diatonically , it will sound good in certain keys - and crap in others - so you'll be limited to playing music in the rights key(s) - unless you re-tune it for every piece - and even then, you're stuffed if the piece contains key changes!

[I doubt whether any trained piano tuner would be capable of tuning it the way you want, because they rely on beats between the harmonics (which you won't have) to know when it's 'right'.]

[Tim Downie]

Might it be easier to buy a relatively cheap tuning lever and then "beef it up" to your requirements to give you the feel that you want? (Assuming that the socket itself is made of decent hardened steel).

Tim

[Andrew Gabriel]

The point is that a violin player will tune each note as it's played (and should be avoiding the open strings anyway). The tuning will vary according to the key (and the other players, of course). The tuning of the open strings is nowhere near as critical as it is on a piano.

A pianist can't tune each note as it's played. You can tune a piano to be in tune for one key only (or possibly two for the major and minor keys). It will be nearly in tune for a few more, but way out of tune for all the others. That might work if you play a piece of music which doesn't change key, but of course most pieces of any length do modulate through many keys. Or you can tune it to equal temperament, where it's most closely in tune for all keys, but not perfect for any. If you're playing music which predates equal temperament, it will tend to modulate into sets of keys which could be tuned reasonably closely and avoid keys which were out of tune. In that case, you can tune a piano for a specific piece of music. That's sometimes done with something like a Steinway concert grand, as it needs tuning each time it's moved anyway (someones twice), and may be playing only the same piece of music between each move.

[Baz]

What is wrong with this?

£20.

Baz

[Pete Shew]

I made one from an old Skoda engine, or more specifically a cylinder head bolt and a push rod.

I softened the bolt by heating and gentle cooling, cut a length and drilled a transverse hole to take the cut off push rod for the handle. This was inserted when the bolt was hot and became a tight fit as it cooled (luck?).

To make the square end, I drilled a hole in the end of the bolt and I using heat and a hammer, and a piano peg as a former, forged the end of the bolt to shape.

Finally re-heat treated with a quench to harden the steel. The resultant tuning 'hammer' worked well.

Having said that, I have just found one for £47 - or

Pete

[Alan Braggins]

>> Any better suggestions for making a tapered square hole in steel? I

Spark eroder, and you can do that in hardened steel. Go on, you know you want one :-)

[Kevin]

Buy a square hole surrounded by a steel clock key? Adding the necessary leverage shouldn't be too difficult.

[ARWadsworth]

Well he was not being serious Brian.

[Nick Odell]

I think that the OPs objection is that he says that the commercial ones twist and flex - though I own one similar to that illustration, Baz, and I've never had any difficulties using it. IANAPianotuner by the way and I very rarely get to use mine.

To the OP: have you thought about trading your piano in for a clavichord? Or since this is a DIY group, building one from plans or from a kit? You should be able to play it in many more natural scales than a retuned piano once you've mastered the technique of varying the pitch of each note through your contact with the keys.

Nick

[Matty F]

Can I get a clavichord for a dollar? :) I do also want to build something that is a cross between an autoharp and an electric guitar.