Square Rubber Grommet replacement

[Arlie Rauch]

Yesterday I went to tune an older Lowrey spinet.  In order to replace  
a damper lever I had to remove the action, and that mean removing the  
lifter wires from the ends of the keys.  Well, all the square rubber  
grommets had become hard and brittle, and they broke as I removed  
them.  Fortunately, I had a new set with me.

Installing the new ones was a terrible job.  The ends of the lifter  
wires looked like they had been twisted off so that there was a piece  
of metal interfering with screwing on the new grommet (it would  
really have been helpful if the lifter wires had tapered at the  
end).  So a little file was helpful there.  But the job took a long  
time and required lots of finger work--my fingers and finger joints  
really took a beating.  Of course, once the nuts were started, I  
could use a tool I have to turn those square nuts to the proper  
position.

Does anyone have a quick and neat way of replacing these square  
rubber grommets?  They are #3785 in Schaff's catalog.

Arlie Rauch