Sorry Fred. Usually I employ the use of a drill press vice which can be clamped to the drill press table. By locating the button even with the front edge of the jaws I can duplicate the placement of successive buttons as the press quill is always in the same location. To make things easier I will cut a small scrap of wood to elevate the button to a point even with the top of the vice jaws. This scrap will need to be slightly narrower than the width of the button so it provides support from underneath but allows the the jaws to be free to apply the holding pressure. Regards Norman Cantrell, Registered Piano Technician ________________________________ From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Tue, August 24, 2010 12:10:37 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Installing new let off buttons Hi Norman, One missing detail: how do you hold the button itself and ensure it is square to the drill press? Fred On Aug 23, 2010, at 5:07 PM, Norman Cantrell wrote: It is also possible to thread the let off buttons before trying to mount them by mounting a small tap into a drill press and lowering the tap into the pre-drilled hole. The taper on the tap will self center and you can turn the quill by hand or by pulling on the V-belt to spin the chuck into the wood. McMaster Carr sells taps as small as 2-56 and 3-48 one of which should match rather closely the threads on the let off wires. Once they are pre-threaded they will align nicely when installed. If you want an exact match on the threads and don't want to order a tap you can always find a let off eyescrew with the same threads you are using and snip off the eye, mount the remainder in the drill press chuck and with a mill file introduce a taper onto the wire by filing three sides flat and angled toward the center of the wire to make tapered thread cutters. This will make a tap that will work for several sets of wooden buttons. > >Regards > >Norman Cantrell, Registered Piano Technician -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100824/4fbbc6d6/attachment.htm>
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