Upright Shank Replacement

[Tom Cole]

We recently discussed the difficulty of cedar shank replacement. Since I
have an old action on the bench for "renovation", I wondered how I could
effectively extract the the top 16 shanks without the usual high failure
rate I've experienced with this method.

After clipping off the old shanks and belt sanding the cedar flush with
the top of the butts, I proceeded to bore pilot holes, a little smaller
this time for a tighter fit with the extracting screw. I used a #36
drill for #8 x 1-1/4" "grabber" screws (self-drilling, hardened steel
with the tips ground off). Assuming the original hole depth to be 5/8",
I set the drill press stop accordingly and jigged my block vise to hold
each butt such that the back stop dowel was horizontal. 

The holes all drilled, I set the butts upright on the bench and began
filling the holes with water + surfactant (wallpaper paste remover works
well), going back over the lot of them several times as the mix soaked in.

After soaking at least 20 minutes, I started the extraction process and
was surprised to get a 100% result. Some of them even came out without
the usual heat-the-screw-with-a-match step. As I bottomed the screws in
the pilot holes, a few of the shanks started to turn and could be easily extracted.

The two reasons that I've had trouble with cedar shanks in the past, I
believe, is that the pilot holes were too big, permitting the screws to
pull out with only a few slivers; and I wasn't waiting long enough for
the water to penetrate well into the glue joint. 

Tom Cole