>a picture of those pliers would be nice.<G> Valve spring pliers (with the tips ground down as necessary to fit the fork spacing) work well for this job. > As I've worked on a few of these, it always was a pain in the butt >to replace/install those pins and then install the Shank into the >fork w/the proper amount of friction! Yikes said I on the first >one.<G> All modern kapsels for use on Viennese actions (e.g. Laukuff, which come in shiny tin plated versions or plain brass, both the same material, or the ones solf by Zucky) are made with the wrong material. Historical kapsels are lead-free brass which has just the correct springiness to hold the pins/shank in place while still allowing flexibility to adjust the tension holding them to set the friction to the desired amount. Leaded brass is too stiff to work in this application. (Getting lead-free brass nowadays is possible, but not easy) You can get authentic - which in this case can be interpreted as "they work" - from Paul Poletti. There are other things wrong with the modern ones, leading to other practical problems trying to use them. Stephen -- Dr Stephen Birkett, Associate Professor Department of Systems Design Engineering University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON Canada N2L 3G1 Director, Waterloo Piano Systems Group Associate Member, Piano Technician's Guild E3 Room 3158 tel: 519-888-4567 Ext. 3792 fax: 519-746-4791 PianoTech Lab Room E3-3160 Ext. 7115 mailto: sbirkett[at]real.uwaterloo.ca http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett
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