Broken Agraffe

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Avery,


At 09:40 PM 5/18/2006, you wrote:

>List,
>
>A dealer I do some work for just called me and said they had a broken
>agraffe on a Steinway
>M from the 1940's. I have information about the usual ways to remove a
>broken agraffe when
>it's broken flush with the plate.
>
>My question is will the same method(s) work when it's broken down inside
>the hole? Any
>suggestions, cautions, etc.? In my 32 yrs. of doing this work, I've only
>had to replace one!

Isaac Sadigursky is the resident broken agraffe genius...

In the meantime, in general, the same methods will work.  Rather more 
caution has to be taken to avoid bunging up the threads (duh).  I've 
often had better luck with a couple of drops of Break Free, or your 
favorite ballistics oil.  Sometimes drilling and tapping is the only 
way out, though.

One thing I have done several times (and which may have been written 
up in the journal at some point or other) when things have been well 
and truly screwed up is to drill out the whole mess, then either make 
or have a machinist make a plug that is threaded on the outside for a 
standard thread and on the inside for an agraffe.  Drill out and then 
tap the hole where the broken agraffe was out to accept the outside 
thread of the custom insert, LocTite (or JB Weld) it in place (having 
checked to be sure that it fits/etc), then install a new agraffe and 
away you go.  As I write this, I think that this has been covered in 
more (and much better detail) on the list, as well.  There might be 
something in the archives.

Best of luck!

Horace



>Thanks.
>
>Avery Todd
>University of Houston
>
>

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