S&S D Action Question (original parts?)

[Newton Hunt]

This sounds like an original S&S factory job.

You can do several things like lengthen the tail, not so easy,
Try to make it work the way it is, generally not possible,
      or
Reshape the tails yourself, not so hard but time consuming.

I use a shaping fixture in my belt and disk sander that,
      has a stick that sits in the miter slot that
      has a 2x1" block of material attached to the stick and
      a nail driven into the block 3" from the disk.
Place a shank on the block, push the moulding into the disk and rotate it out
so it pivots on the nail.  The fixture is assembled so the shanks is supported
from the nail toward the disk.

In your case you may wish to use lots of CA glue to fasten small pieces of wood
to the bevel of the tail so you can properly shape the tail all the way to the
very tip.  If you do not do this you will have to remove so much wood from the
tail so the backchecks are too close to the hammer felt.  This will cause the
felt to hit the top of the backchecks at rest, a real pain in the middle
section.

Leave as much wood on the tail as you can to preven this from happening.

If you need to remove wood to lighten the hammers do so from the inside of the
hammer, not from the tail.

Use of 50 or 40 grit paper to shape the tails will obviate the need to roughen
them up a bit.

It is a pain to remove each hammer to shap the tails, but it also affords you
the opportunity to check pining and hammer weights.

By using extra lengths of wood, preferably a nice hardwood like the sticks from
renner hammer shanks boxes, you can lengthen the tails by about 1/8" or so,
which all taken togather will make checking possible at 5/8" or less.

      Newton J. Hunt
      nhunt@rci.rutgers.edu