Got a piano bench that threatens to collapse everytime you sit down at the piano? With a little luck, you might only need to tighten a couple of the bolts that hold the bench legs to the body.

Open the bench lid and take a look inside. You should see something that looks about like the drawing on the left. On the average piano bench the legs are secured by metal brackets bolted to the leg and the sides, as shown in the inset of the drawing. Some more considerate bench makers provide a wing nut for easy adjusting by hand, but more often than not there are conventional nuts that will require a pair of pliers or a small wrench to adjust. Turn the nuts clockwise to tighten the leg back to the sides. In fact, you should probably tighten these bolts periodically as they tend to work loose easily, particularly if you have a lot of heavy music books stored inside, or a wiggly kid squirming around on the piano bench as kids do.

If the leg is attached with dowel rods instead of bolts, as may be the case in some older benches, you'll need to glue it all back together with Elmer's or some other wood glue. Normally glue repairs require clamping and you may want to send it off to a cabinet maker or carpenter for this sort of repair.