Hi, Sean,
I will mention another thing I learned the hard way. Those beautiful brass casters consist of a non-moving socket “tube” up inside the leg with threads on its inner top, and its flange is screwed to the leg bottom. The business end of the caster has its own flange, which I call the outer flange, and the caster's stem has threads at the top that screw into the socket when it’s installed. The outer flange has two slots that are used to snug it tight against the inner flange. (Then the caster rotates on its own bearings, and the stem should not move.)
I have learned to snug up those two flanges every year, or at least every other year. I let a couple of pianos go about 3 years, thinking the casters were fine because when the weight of the piano was sitting on them, they looked solid. By chance one had to be put on its side, and when the movers picked it up, I saw a caster swinging in the breeze! I was shocked, and I could turn the outer flange 3 full turns back up to snug up against the inner flange. When it’s that bad, you can turn the outer flange back in with your fingertips.
Those pianos roll around the stage with random swiveling of the casters. Over time, they come unscrewed. I strongly advise NOT to put LocTite in the threads, because on occasion they must come out. (I have had to remove casters when a socket tube broke away from its inner flange, and once when bad after-market screws holding the inner flange sheared off, and so on.)
Every year in your annual maintenance program (mine has a worksheet which I keep year after year to track progress) I snug them up. After one year, there’s not much to do, maybe 1/4 turn. You must lift the weight off each wheel in turn, and I use a Jack-in-the-Box from Jansen. The wheel only needs to come 1/8” off the floor. I use a spanner tool from Yamaha, which is beautiful and fits (so far) on CFIII, CFX, NY and Hamburg large casters from any of the last 20 years or so. I suspect it may fit other makes as well. The tool is expensive but wonderful, If you want a cheaper alternative, there’s an adjustable spanner from McMaster Carr with 1/4” round pegs. If you are willing to do some grinding, you can make the pegs into shorter rectangular tabs to fit the slots, and I think it’s $39. If you want photos, I can send them. This was part of a concert business class I was teaching, so they’re handy.
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I’ve also been following this thread with great interest and wanted to thank you gentle folks for sharing all this info. I wasn’t aware of the overtightening issue (in addition to accidentally dragging the pianos around with engaged brakes. Speaking of “brakes”, I am fascinated and find it interesting that colloquial spelling for “brakes” in many instances has become “breaks”! I suppose that people see the word misspelled and follow suit.) I will revise the warning and “please please please” signage I attached to the covers of affected pianos when I get back from Tucson. UCLA recently purchased a new CFX and NY Steinway D with these brass wheels for its Schoenberg Hall, as well as a Hamburg D for the recording studio, all with these lovely and functional brass casters—which move much easier and are far better looking than stage dollies (and resonate through the wooden stage as well, and support the structure of the piano more evenly on a flat floor with less stress) but more worrisome. One other issue we have is, I also asked our stage personnel to watch for the “lip” of the orchestra pit lift created in spots, when the pianos are brought up from their storage space in the mezzanine below up and rolled onto the stage. The stage and the lift are not quite flush with each other and are offset slightly in spots, creating a small “cliff” or raised edge to cross which I know is very rough on the piano legs rolling over that. There are some “flat spots” though in areas where the lift and stage meet, which are ok to roll the pianos over and I urged the stage crew to roll the pianos over to the stage at those locations. I brought this up to facilities to have the lift readjusted properly.
Sean McLaughlin
Lead Piano Technician
UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
Los Angeles, California
310-825-7058