BTW, I'm not convinced of the tonal benefits of any particular glue either although I did recently run into a piano where the new set of hammers were glued on with rubber cement. I guess the idea was that the joint would be more flexible to withstand the constant pounding. The biggest problem seemed to be that the hammers were tending to migrate a randomly off 90 degrees in either direction. Made for lots of contact intimacy between adjacent hammers and an interesting tone that was produced when just the edge of the hammer struck kind of between two strings--yipes! David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David Love Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 3:16 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] glue/hammers I hadn't thought of beveling that hole for that purpose. Makes sense though. Do you just use a countersink or some such tool or do you taper the entire hole with a tapered drill? David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron Nossaman Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 1:34 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] glue/hammers It's interesting to me that so many techs are using Titebond's Molding glue for hammers. After so many years of hearing sworn testimony, often frothing, that a less than glass hard glue will kill hammer tone catastrophically, it pleases me to near no such negative claims about as soft a glue as this stuff is. There's a more plausible smell of reality about it. Alan, I suspect the pliability of the glue is at least somewhat responsible for the joints' durability under humidity extremes. I use hot hide, not for any believed magic tonal properties, but because I like the stuff and am comfortable working with it. Since I started (somewhere around 30 years ago) beveling the bore edge before gluing the hammers on, I haven't had a loose hammer with it. It seems that scraping the glue off the shank with a sharp edged hole in the hammer molding is counterproductive to good glue joints. Whooda thought? If you want a very quick set easy to work cold glue that dries crispy hard, try some of WN&G's glue. It's Franklin's Assembly 65. Also good stuff. Ron N
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