<HTML><HTML>List Two questions in one day!  Sorry to take up the bandwidth. The suspect: a family heirloom Kimball upright from the 1890/1900s.  <= BR> The piano has a brass hammer/damper lever flange rail.  I know that th= ese can become brittle over time.  This piano needs its dampers replac= ed, but I wonder how risky the removal of the damper levers (to scrape off t= he old felts) will be?  There are no problems with the brass rail righ= t now.  I did have to replace one brass hammer butt plate which had cr= acked, but the brass rail is fine, so far.  I just wonder about the st= ress of screwing in and out the damper lever flanges.  Never having wo= rked on one of these, I'd love to hear from someone who has had experience i= n this area.  Now secondly, and more embarassingly: how the heck do you remove the damper = levers on this beast?  I'm hoping someone is familiar with this setup = because it's hard to describe.  I've seen two pianos like this in the = last six months, so maybe someone out there knows about this.  The scr= ew for what I assume is the damper lever flange seems to be inside a little = window in the lever, facing up, not out, so there is no way to get a screw d= river in there to loosen the screw.   It's right where an old Ste= inway damper lever would have it's little screw and plate, but instead, ther= e's this hole in the wood, and inside are a couple of little metal rods, and= there's the screw.  You can see it in profile, because it's facing st= raight up, in the same direction as the length of the lever.  I hope s= omeone out there knows what I'm talking about! I honestly didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at it.  Only long = enough to think, here's something new.  Or I should say, old.  R= eally old.   Then the owner asked me what condition the piano is = in, and what needed replacing.  Now, I'm faced with the possibility of= having to figure out how to remove those damper levers.  An<FO= NT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Lucida Grande" LANG="0" SIZE="3">d, possibl= y replace the brass rail, too, if it comes down to that.  Thanks in advance for any advice, Tom Sivak Chicago PTG Associate  </HTML>