<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Tvak@aol.com">Tvak@aol.com</a> wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid88.1ad309fe.2ede9b62@aol.com">List Two questions in one day!  Sorry to take up the bandwidth. The suspect: a family heirloom Kimball upright from the 1890/1900s.  The piano has a brass hammer/damper lever flange rail.  I know that these can become brittle over time.</blockquote> Tom The one Kimball I worked on had broken a few of the flange rail fingers. I managed to find a tech who had the same piano somewhere in storage and was willing to send me the flange rails. Hopefully, your rails are still intact. What I did was to anneal the brass rails before installing them in the piano. Having done experiments on annealed and untreated rails, I found that it helped to do the heat treating. The annealed brass was still tough enough to hold the parts and is much less prone to breaking. Just take a torch to each piece and heat until it glows a dull red. This can also be done on a gas stove. Use new butt plates when reassembling the action. Try not to overtighten the butt plates. Tom Cole </body> </html>