On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Matthew Todd <toddpianoworks at att.net>wrote: > I went to service an old player upright today. There are two broken > hammer shanks, which I took with me. > > This will be my first go at angle boring, since one of the hammers is in > the bass. > > I should have everything to do this project, but could I get some e-mails > on some suggestions, etc? > > Thanks a lot! > > ***TODD PIANO WORKS* > Matthew Todd, Piano Technician > (979) 248-9578 > http://www.toddpianoworks.com > Hi Matthew, I would strongly suggest you have everything with you to effect a repair such as this on the spot. This is an every day repair for most techs. This is not the type of repair you should be returning to your shop to prepare and making a second trip to install. Most of the time this should be a 10 or 15 minute repair at the piano. The glue will tack in 30 minutes or less and most of the time the hammer/new shank can be used to tune almost immediately. I have and do suggest to customers allowing it to set for a few hours before doing any heavy playing but for our purposes a few strikes to tune are fine. To angle bore a hammer, make certain the hammer "bottom" where the shank was glued is flat, sand it if necessary, start the drill bit being very careful to center it in the old shank, gently turning it to start your new hole. The old shank material will be softer and a different color than the hammer molding so following it should be fairly easy, after the drill is started angle it to the appropriate angle. Stop every little bit to make certain you haven't "wandered" off course. When you reach the bottom/top of the hole, about 3/4 (or more) of the way through you have two options. In order to "relieve" the hydraulic pressure of the glue(Titebond Aliphatic Resin)you can either use a punch and punch a hole the rest of the way through or using a sanding file, sand down one side of the new shank(after cutting it to length) so that there is room for glue/air to escape next to the shank in the hole. I would also suggest sanding the other end of the shanks, where they will be glued into the hammer butts, flat on one side and glueing them in first, the flat side helps with ease of alignment both front to back and/or side to side. I hope this helps, Mike -- I intend to live forever. So far, so good. Steven Wright Michael Magness Magness Piano Service 608-786-4404 www.IFixPianos.com email mike at ifixpianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090121/e5209441/attachment-0001.html>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC