<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html>   "Bradley M. Snook" wrote: <blockquote TYPE=CITE><style></style> RicB: "Yes, you should. And its no big deal to do so really. A good set of pinchers applied neatly at the knuckle core and you can pop them right out. Just make sure you keep track of which way the nap of the leather is going. Reglue carefully to line up better then you started out with. You see this all the time, and out of place or angle knuckles can really affect the ratio big time. Improving this kind of thing not only can help drastically the problem you mention, but also make for much more consistent leverage and play." OK, this kind of thing is what I was really after . . I'll give this a try sometime today. One thing though: I should probably line up the flange side of the knuckle (instead of the hammer side), is that right?  What you want to do is to just make sure the all the knuckles are at exactomundo 90 degrees (as in perpendicular :) ) to the shank, and that they are not cockeyed so that one side is higher then the other. If the slots for the knuckle cores are not in the same place...well then you have a bit more work to do, but thats not usually the case. Just make them all nice and straight. So it doesnt matter which side you line up so much... all the sides have to line up...sort of like looking down a nice clean hammer line.  Richard, you had also talked about looking at the wippen height. Have you every bolstered the knuckles to compensate for the unevenness in the wippen height? I have bolstered knuckles on occasion, but only to compensate for very flatened knuckles that had plenty of good leather on them. Been a while now as I usually just replace them.  In anycase I dont think I'd look at it exactly as compensating for uneveness in whippen height.... tho I see where you are coming from. Uneven whippen height normally relfects something about the hammer line. Either hammer bore is irratic, or knuckles are inconsistant... there are other possibilities. A good test is to put a straight edge under a whole section of whippen cushions with the rack off of the keyframe. This insures a dead on whippen line for the moment... then look at your hammer line and note any inconsistancies. Gives you a real good picture of some of the problem areas you have in your top action. Correct what you can of course :) Hope this helps.    Bradley</blockquote> Cheers RicB -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. UiB, Bergen, Norway <A HREF="mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no">mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no</A> <A HREF="http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html">http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html</A> <A HREF="http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html">http://www.hf.uib.no/grieg/personer/cv_RB.html</A>  </html>