Found an interesting thing today. Went to tune a S&S B for the first time and found the action clickety clacking all over the place. Pulled that action to check the hammer glue joints and pinning. Glue joints were fine so I took off a hammer/shank/flange assembly to check the pinning. Swung the flange and I think it would still be swinging if I hadn't stopped it. Eyeballed the center pin as I rotated the flange and noticed that the pin, instead of rotating in the bushing, didn't move. I popped out the center pin which came out with some difficulty. Testing the fit through the wooden eye, the pin literally fell through of its own weight. The fit in the bushing, on the other hand, was so tight, I was unable to reinsert it by hand. As it turns out, the action had been repinned fairly recently. Unfortunately, they got it backwards and had all the centers fitting quite snugly in the bushings and rotating quite freely in the eye. The flanges were certainly free, and also quite noisy. In the process of repinning the action using broaches, I found that the roughened part of the broach kept clogging with felt which reduced it's cutting efficiency. I discovered that putting a drop of Protek on the bushing before inserting the broach seemed to speed up the cutting action of the broach as well as prevent the roughened area of the broach from clogging with felt. I went through the action quite quickly, repinned the whole set of flanges and only at the end began to wonder if using Protek for this purpose might, for reasons unbeknownst to me, create problems later on. I couldn't imagine why it might, but, admittedly, paranoid fantasies did begin to creep in. Anyone else use this method? And have you found any problems, or benefits? David Love davidlovepianos@earthlink.net
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