At 11:35 PM +0000 12/5/01, Barrie Heaton wrote: >I was reinstalling some agraffes the other day and noticed I was down >on the brass spacer washers, phoned the two UK supply houses and both >have stopped stocking them !!! > > Have the US supply houses stopped as well if so what are you using >paper? Hello Barrie, Richard Gardner claims he's the only man in England with a stock of these. I'll tell you what I did last time. I get some copper wire of a suitable thickness (I'm lucky because I have all the gauges for stringmaking) and pull it a turn and a bit round a drill or an awl. I then nip the wire with centre-pin cutters where it crosses so that I have a perfect circle. This I put between the flattening dies I use of strings (but two steel plates would do) and hammer the circle flat. The copper is hardened by the impact and does just as good a job as brass, if not better. You need to play about a bit to get the trick of ending up with the hole the right size, but it's easy enough, and you can make shims whatever thickness you need. Let me know if you'd like a few yards of various sizes of copper and I can let you have them for nothing. I need to talk to you soon anyway because I've got a dozen chipped keys on this Lipp I've just started on and want some of the magic potion. I'm sure you can tell the list what you think of the Lipp. JD
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