Viennese Action Pliers

[Avery Todd]

Stephen,

Is that what Malcolm is referring to?

 >It's a kind of reverse pliers; when you squeeze the handle the front spreads
 >instead of coming together, to remove the hammer shanks from the kapsels. 
You
 >can get an O-ring separator that works pretty well....best to you, Malcolm

Avery

At 08:22 AM 6/12/05, you wrote:
>>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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