sluggish hammers on spinet

[Brian Trout]

Hi Bruce,

I don't know if others might know of a few tricks using alcohol and water,
perhaps in conjunction with a hair dryer?? to shrink the felt in the center
pin bushings, but I have heard that it's possible.  Perhaps someone
knowledgeable with the technique will chime in.

But the reason I wrote was that something else popped into my mind that I've
run into on occasion.  Perhaps it is of no value in this situation, but
perhaps it might be of use to someone somewhere sometime.

I have, on occasion, run across a drop action spinet where the keys failed
to return to their normal rest position.  Upon checking things out, I did
not find any of the usual sticky points.  The hammer flanges were loose, the
wippen flanges were loose, the key bushings were loose, the balance holes
were plenty big enough, the hammer return springs were fine, but all put
together, it didn't work right.

What I found on a few was that the wire coming up from the elbow and through
the little grommet on the end of the key was at such an angle as to prevent
the thing from coming back to rest.  On the ones that have the little
grommet, there's usually a little metal 'fork' on the end of the key that
receives the grommet.  It might, at first, not seem to be a point that would
cause problems, but the natural angle of the fork to the wire is 90 degrees.
If it gets too far off of 90 degrees, it starts to put pressure on the
action in such a way as to not allow freedom of movement, usually in just
one direction.

What to do??  There aren't a lot of options that I know of.  Either bend the
fork (usually down, I think, I can't remember), or bend the wire for more
freedom of motion.

Probably not particularly helpful right now, but it was a thought that came
to mind when I read your post.  Just something to put on the upper left hand
corner shelf in the back of your mind in hopes that if you ever need it
someday, it'll throw rocks and miscellaneous debris at you!  :-)

Good luck,

Brian Trout
Quarryville, PA
btrout@desupernet.net