Well, yes, you'd think so. But...back when I worked at Baldwin I visited the manufacturer making agrafes for just about all of the U.S. piano makers. I picked up a handful of random agrafes from a bin of finished parts and looked at the alignment of the holes. They were visibly out of alignment on nearly all of the two dozen or so I picked up. I didn't have to measure them, it was clear the vertical alignment of the strings going through these agrafes was going to be off by +/- 0.25 mm or so. Within a given agrafe; I don't know what it would have been like from one agrafe to the next but I couldn't imagine how it would be any better than this. I brought this to the attention of the marketing manager-type person who was giving me the tour. He did some checking and assured me they were "good enough." Good enough for what, I wanted to know, as they clearly didn't match the tolerances listed on the design spec sheet I was holding in my hand. Essentially, I was told, they were good enough as long as their customers--the pianomakers, including the one I was working for--kept buying them. Yes, they could be made to closer tolerances but that would slow the line down slightly and would raise the price by a penny or so per agrafe. No one wanted to pay the extra money so they were good enough. ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 6939 Foothill Court SW, Olympia, Washington 98512 USA Phone 360.515.0119 — Cell 360.388.6525 del at fandrichpiano.com — ddfandrich at gmail.com -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron Nossaman Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 2:34 PM To: Ed Sutton; pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] agraffe replacement You want the strings to be level at the agraffe as a starting point. Ron N
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