Samick hammer knuckles HARD!!

[Roger Jolly]

Greetings All,
              This weekend I intended to change a set of knuckles on a 5'8"
Samick manufactured grand (Wurlitzer) that exibited severe clicking and
clacking! Re;several fairly recent post.
  Since I had intended to change the knuckles, I thought this would give me
an ideal opportunity to experiment.

  1. Observations:  The leather or composite material was not hard but
quite   pliable. The core felt was like rock, looked like woven wippen felt
that had   glue wicked into it. The leather was not firmly around the core
felt.

  2. Experiment#1 Laterally needle the felt. Results; very marginal
improvement,
  an exercise in futility.

  3. Experiment#2 Bolster out the leather with 4 thicknesses of fairly
thick   darning wool. This made a significant improvement in noise
reduction, but I   did not like the little tuft of wool end, or the slight
deformation of the      knuckle, but I'll keep this one in my bag of tricks
as a practical field        repair.

  4. Experiment#4 Scotch and water teatment????  Not quite! 50% alcohol/water,
  upend action, leaning against bench, use an eye dropper and wet the core
felt,
  turn the action up side down and repeat on the opposite side of felt,
left   over night to dry with the hammers up and off wips, big improvement,
not a lot   of hassel. 

  5. Experiment#5 STEAM  Not again?    Kettle with whistle removed has a
nice     1/8"   dia hole, we use it for key bushing removal. Good jet of
steam that is   small.
  Removed hammers one at a time and steamed core felt on both sides. Wow
did   they puff up, leather nice and firm against core, geometry looks
good, hammers   left off wips to dry. 

  48Hrs later. Hair drier used on the knuckles at the 24Hr interval, the
steamed  knuckle felt, was the quietest and is acceptable. How ever it is
the most time consuming by far because of hammer removal. A needle test was
performed to compare with Experiment#1 a clear improvement on core density.
Time will tell if the treatment is long lasting, however I have used steam
in several other applications that I'm quite optomistic of the out come. If
it last it will be much quicker than replacing knuckles.

  Tomorrow I'm going to invent a steam diven tuning hammer and market
through K-Tel.

  Thanks Rob for sharing your inputs.

 Yours the closet steamer.
 
Roger Jolly
University of Saskatchewan
Dept. of Music.