There’s a 1927 Steinway M whose strings are a little rusty. Even after putting a drop of Protek where the strings go through the agraffe, one of them broke off at the threads while I was lowering the pitch of G#2 (a bichord). So I guess I will be doing my first agraffe repair job. What worries me the most is how to decide whether to put one more half-turn into the agraffe. I don’t want to leave the agraffe too loose, and I don’t want to tighten it so tight that I break it off. Ideally, I would like a torque spec so I could use a torque wrench to help me make the decision. If the agraffe is pointing in the right direction, but the torque is less than X ft-lb, then I will go for another half-turn. Can anyone tell me what ft-lb limit I should use? I guess most of you who do this a lot develop a feel for how tight is enough, but I need to get it right the first time. In addition, I also wonder how one goes about centering the drill for the easy-out on the remains of the old agraffe so that threads in the plate are not damaged. Should I expect to mess them up and just commit to going up from the current 7/32" size to the 1/4" size agraffe by re-tapping the plate? And even if I don’t mess up the threads, it is usual to run a tap through them anyway just to clean them up before the new agraffe is installed? Finally, I managed to remove the old bass strings without cutting them by straightening them just enough to slide through the old agraffe, so that maybe I could re-use the old bass strings. Is that a reasonable expectation? Robert Scott Ypsilanti, Michigan
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