Spinet hammer return spring

[Tom Cole]

Andy,

I would go with Keith's advice. To take away some of the frustration of
trying to start the screw while holding the repair spring and shining
the flashlight (I count four hands so far), you might consider the
following: see if you can first start the screw that fastens the repair
spring plate to the spring rail (if the spring rail is not too far below
the hammer rest rail) and drive it part way with a long-shanked screw
driver. Modify the spring plate so that it looks like the illustration
below. I make a couple of snips with wire cutters to open out the hole.

___________
|_______   |
 _______)  |---------------------- 
|__________|


Then, slide the plate under the screw head and tighten. This should
reduce the number of times that you will need to fish dropped parts out
of a spinet action.

If you cannot use the screw driver because the action is really
shoe-horned in there, you might achieve success with the thumb tack idea
but I've never tried it.

Tom
-- 
Thomas A. Cole, RPT
Santa Cruz, CA