<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Following up, my homemade vice grip slide hammer worked like a champ. It planed off a good bit of the sides of the first bridge pin I tried it on, showing me that I was dealing with epoxied pins, as I had suspected. I ended up needing a good bit of heat (45 seconds with a 25 watt iron, getting the tops of three pins hot enough to boil water), then a whack downward with my brass slide hammer (from pianoforte supply) to break the glue joint, then they would yank out with the vice grip slide hammer. <DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>End result: quite nice. Not perfect, but an enormous improvement. Terminations are important <G>. The capo was pretty nasty as well. It had been sharpened a la McMorrow, and had pretty deep grooves.<BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>Regards,</DIV><DIV>Fred Sturm</DIV><DIV>University of New Mexico</DIV><DIV><A href="mailto:fssturm@unm.edu">fssturm@unm.edu</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Dec 15, 2006, at 7:57 AM, Fred Sturm wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Here's what I came up with last night, rummaging through the shop for available stuff. I found a 6" machine screw that had threads to match a vice grip. I'll probably use the larger socket as the hammer (more mass), but used the smaller one for the picture to show it in place with a washer to match the hole in the socket with the size of the screw head. BTW, Jurgen (fortepiano) has a nice brass slide hammer for installing or tapping bridge pins.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>