<html> My colleagues,   I hereby present another episode in the continuing saga of how to repair butterfly hammers.     Below is a constructive exchange from our colleagues in 2002.  I also have successfully used CA glue in the past to repair a few separated hammer felts found in cheap spinets.  Today I encountered a 1949 Poole spinet with -26- separated hammer head felts. In this job I removed the action to my shop. This time I experimented with HOT MELT GLUE and it works the best of any of my remedies so far.  The hot glue is thick enough to not get absorbed into the felt and sets up faster than CA glue with no clamping. Carman Gentile RPT Redwood Chapter ============================================================= ----- Original Message ----- From: "C Stewart" <calexste@yahoo.com> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 3:49 PM Subject: Butterflies! (spreading hammers) List, I'm working on a late 1980's era Baldwin spinet.  It seems to have been subjected to some excessive humidity at some point in its life, but is in pretty good shape.  Some of the hammers in the bass section have butterflied (there are no staples in these hammers).  My question is, short of removing the action, is there any efficient way to glue and clamp these back together?  (this piano belongs to my sister in-law, and I have limited time to work on it).  Preferred glues? Thanks for any help. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -Court Stewart   I have applied thick CA, sprayed with kicker, and squish together with fingers and hold for five or ten seconds - done. I must admit though, this has always been on an older piano. On the ones I have done like this the resultant tone seems quite consistent with the unaffected hammers. Although what I have done seems to work fine, I do consider it a "quick and dirty" method of addressing the problem. Terry Farrell   </html>