Greetings list, I serviced a 1967 Yamaha Spinet today that was in remarkably good condition, except for one small item. The owner's grandson somehow opened the lid a while back and grabbed A#4 by the hammer and broke it off. It's broken very close to the hammer butt, so I plan on using the Spurlock method with the drywall screw, wallpaper paste remover, heat, etc. to remove the remnant still left in the hammer butt. I've attached a photo of what it currently looks like. The extra glob of glue is from the owner's attempt to use gorilla glue to fix it. He said it worked for about 10 notes and then broke again. I have a new hammer shank I'm going to use. My problem is this... Normally I would glue one end into the hammer butt and then dry fit the hammer so the height matches the neighboring hammers. I would then cut off the excess above the top edge of the hammer. This hammer, though, is not drilled all the way through, so that option is out. (see photo) I could attach the hammer to the shank and then dry fit the butt end, trim as necessary and then glue, but I don't want to attempt to glue the shank in place when it's way down into the drop action. I'm afraid of getting glue on something I don't want way down in the abyss of the action. I could also remove the butt/flange and glue the shank outside of the action once the correct length has been determined and then put it back in, but getting to the flange screw is a royal pain in the... well... hammer butt. It almost takes one of those "cirque du soleil" feats of body twisting to use a thin screwdriver from underneath the keybed, between the stickers, while holding the top part from above the action. So... I'm trying to find an easier way to get the correct length without getting glue all over the place or having to remove and replace the butt flange multiple times. Any ideas, sequences, or tricks? Other than hire an apprentice, that is? :-) Rob McCall McCall Piano Service, LLC Murrieta, CA rob at mccallpiano.com www.mccallpiano.com 951-698-1875 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: HammerShank.jpg Type: image/jpg Size: 120111 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091010/687e9866/attachment-0001.jpg>
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