My First Agraffe Repair

[Joe And Penny Goss]

Hi Robert,
You most likely will lose the becket, but that is no big loss. Use your flat
surface pliers to get the wire as straight as possible and with the pin
backed out 6 turns restring. You may need to use a drop or two of CA doing
it this way, but it is a lot quicker than messing with a dummy pin to make
the coil for me. Having the tuning pin too high is better than one too low,
for with pinblock support jack, it can be driven down to match the others.
After you have the new becket made and the first 3/4 of the coil made, put
tension on the coil by lifting on the string with your free hand, (sometimes
I do that before starting the coil but after running the wire through the
agraff  <G>) pull on the string with your thumb (pressure down) and little
finger (pressure up) and make the coil.
Doing this will help keep the coil from overwraping  itself.
Do watch what is happening to the dampers, as you may not like the damper
work, that allowing the bass string to bend them makes.
Joe Goss RPT
Mother Goose Tools
imatunr@srvinet.com
www.mothergoosetools.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Scott" <robert.scott@tunelab-world.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 6:16 PM
Subject: My First Agraffe Repair


>
> There’s a 1927 Steinway M whose strings are a little rusty.  Even after
> putting a drop of Protek where the strings go through the agraffe, one of
> them broke off at the threads while I was lowering the pitch of G#2 (a
> bichord).  So I guess I will be doing my first agraffe repair job.
>
> What worries me the most is how to decide whether to put one more
> half-turn into the agraffe.  I don’t want to leave the agraffe too loose,
> and I don’t want to tighten it so tight that I break it off.  Ideally, I
> would like a torque spec so I could use a torque wrench to help me make
> the decision.  If the agraffe is pointing in the right direction, but the
> torque is less than X ft-lb, then I will go for another half-turn.  Can
> anyone tell me what ft-lb limit I should use?  I guess most of you who do
> this a lot develop a feel for how tight is enough, but I  need to get it
> right the first time.
>
> In addition, I also wonder how one goes about centering the drill for the
> easy-out on the remains of the old agraffe so that threads in the plate
> are not damaged.  Should I expect to mess them up and just commit to going
> up from the current 7/32" size to the 1/4" size agraffe by re-tapping the
> plate?  And even if I don’t mess up the threads, it is usual to run a tap
> through them anyway just to clean them up before the new agraffe is
> installed?
>
> Finally, I managed to remove the old bass strings without cutting them by
> straightening them just enough to slide through the old agraffe, so that
> maybe I could re-use the old bass strings.  Is that a reasonable
> expectation?
>
> Robert Scott
> Ypsilanti, Michigan
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