Chickering Damper Wires

[Susan Kline]

Dick --

I'll send you Les's post, which is a classic and complete treatment
of threaded damper wires and how to deal with them. The drop of glue
you are seeing is burnt shellac. (Shellac thickened by burning off
some of the alcohol.)

I think that turning the heads off the wires, replacing the felt,
and turning them back on (then adding a spot of hide glue or burnt
shellac) sounds like the best and least laborious method. You may
need to turn some of the wires up or down, depending on the difference
in thickness of your felt to the old felt.

Susan

At 03:08 PM 1/14/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>The Chickering damper wires are screwed into the top flange.  The
>technique is to raise the damper stop rail as far as it will go, raise a
>damper lever as high as it will go and turn out the damper.  If they
>will not turn then use s heat gun and heat the wire until it loosens and
>it can be turned.  If they are real tight you may wish to hold the top
>block with a pair of pliers to prevent damaging the pinning or splitting
>old wood.
>
>Chickerings are such a pain...
>
>                 Newton
>
>Pianotoone@AOL.COM wrote:
> >
> > Hi List and Happy New Year
> >
> > Today I was called to replace some damper felts on a small Chickering 
> Grand.
> >
> > When I pulled the action I discovered the damper wires were screwed 
> into the
> > jacks (blocks) with what appeared to be a little drop of glue where the 
> wire
> > entered the jack.  No amount of head scratching could help me determine how
> > to remove the wires.  All grands I have worked on have had little screws
> > holding the damper wires into the jacks.
> >
> > The archives listed one instance where the whole set wwas removed from the
> > piano (Susan Kline) and replaced with an APSCO part.  BUT the piano was
> > unstrung.  Another writer mentioned that Les Smith had a technique but I
> > couldn't find it in the archives
> >
> > Any advice???
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Dick Day
> > Marshall MI