The general meeting for this month will be held on Tuesday, November 10 starting at 7 p.m. at Frank and Camille's new showroom location:

Please note: Frank and Camille's closes at 8 p.m. The meeting must begin promptly.

This month's technical class will be given by Douglas Gregg, Classic Piano Doc from Southold, NY. It will be mostly novel information developed through experimentation. There will be two sections. One will include methods to restore old bass strings for a brighter sound and appearance. The other will be uses of Ballistol in piano work including voicing.

Douglas Gregg DVM, PhD

Douglas Gregg is a retired veterinary pathologist with an education background. He was on faculty of several veterinary schools and organized training courses at Plum Island Animal Disease Center during his early career. Later he did pathology diagnostics and research on foreign animal disease at Plum Island. His wife claims he is the founding member of “Glue of the Month Club”. Since doing a term paper in advanced chemistry in high school on adhesives, it has been a life long passion. During college, he worked in nearly all the different construction trades during summers, and learned much about tools and materials of various trades.

Before retiring, he was heavily involved in the restoration and expansion of a church pipe organ for about 7 years. Then with the help of his brother-in-law from Steinway, migrated into piano work as a full time retirement job, and currently has a shop in Southold with about 30 pianos on hand in various stages of restoration or decay, in a few cases. He has presented at PTG National with a French polishing workshop in Seattle, and in Chicago, a lecture on adhesives. Other Suffolk chapter presentations have included solo piano moving and Using Tools of Other Trades. He has also regularly submitted TT&T tips for the Journal and is active in the pianotech forum on the web. Doug gave a technical class at the May 2014 Nassau chapter meeting which focused on adhesives, and was based on his Chicago presentation, with some additional TT&Ts included.

The Executive Committee will meet prior to the general meeting at 5 p.m. at the Majestic Diner, 498 Old Country Road, opposite Fortunoff's.

Tesoro Ristorante
967 Old Country Road
Westbury, New York 11590
(516) 334-0022

The four-course dinner is $50 per person (including tax and tip) with a cash bar. We hope everyone will plan to attend. Further details will appear in next month's newsletter. Please send your reservations/payment to our treasurer:

Paul Keogler
C/O Dancing Ivories
11 Washington Avenue
Bay Shore, NY 11706

Although not of the professional grade materials we can obtain from our piano suppliers, a wood finish touch-up kit with 6 markers is available from Bed Bath and Beyond for $6.99, and they work quite well. The colors supplied are Maple, Oak, Cherry, Walnut, Mahogany, and Espresso.