I agree with others about using a soldering iron on the old elbows to remove the portion between the yolks of the whippen. If you want an easy way to screw the new elbows to the wires, here's how I do it. Take a pair of large vice grip pliers and butt them up to the part of the old elbow that remains on the wire. Clamp them tight and then remove the remaining part of the elbow either by tapping the part on a sharp edge or by crushing it with another pair of pliers. This marks the position of the old elbow in the wire. Place the new elbow on the wire and just spin the wire, using the vice grips kind of like a flywheel. Spin until the new elbow butts up against the vice grips and you've located it exactly where the old one was. It helps if you keep the wires in the order they were on the action if you want to minimize your lost motion adjustments. Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: Greg Livingston To: Pianotech list Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 6:53 PM Subject: [pianotech] Replacing plastic elbows Dear Friends, I have a Lester spinet action belonging to a long-time customer on my bench (that is, my dining room table) that needs new elbows. I thought replacing the original plastic elbows would be easy, but only the broken ones are brittle; the unbroken ones are hard as concrete. How do you replace these? Unpin them to put the new ones on? I don't want to risk breaking the wippen by trying to bend the old plastic ones. I'd be grateful for your advice, and my wife will be thrilled to get the dining room table back. Thanks, Greg Livingston PS- I have not figured out how to search the archives, though I've tried; I need help in that area, too. ___________________________________________________ Gregory P. Livingston, Piano Tuning and Service 781-237-9178 Piano Technicians Guild, associate member (Boston chapter) * * * Always remember September 11, 2001 * * * ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chat with Messenger straight from your Hotmail inbox. Check it out -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091207/f9e31b6b/attachment.htm>
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