<HTML>List Now that I am taking care of university pianos, I am doing a lot more voicing.  More voicing means more needles. So I went to the local fabric store looking for #17 needles, which is what I have been told is the right size for voicing. I found some, but they wanted $2.50 for 12 needles. As I was looking around, I found a box of 100 #17 straight pins for the same amount of money. Being the cheap skate that I am, it was a no brainer to pick the box of pins over the dozen needles. But now I might have thrown away $2.50. (I took fifteen minutes to cut the heads off all of them, so I can't even give them to my wife to use in her sewing kit.) It seems that #17 pins are not the same thing as #17 needles. The first time I used the pins, they bent when I tried pushing them into the hammer felt. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, but every time I put in new pins, they would bend with just one or two jabs. Tomorrow I'll go back and buy the needles. So much for saving a few bucks. Any one with the know how why the pins bent so easily? I thought #17 is #17, like wire, regardless of whether it is a pin or a needle. But I guess there must be something more to it than that. Wim </HTML>