9/32 agraffes (DNA)

[Tom Cole]

Ron Nossaman wrote:
> 
> I finished stringing my M&H and chipped it up to pitch today. I used the
> 9/32 x 36tpi agraffes from Schaff, tapping the plate to fit. I had ordered
> 36 trichords, just in case, and still ended up five short of a usable set,
> the balance of which came today. Eighteen of the original 36 trichords were
> double helix thread. No problem with the mono, and bichord. I've been
> hearing about these double helix suckers for a long time now, and I was
> totally mystified as to why Schaff still had them in their inventory. When I
> phoned them to get enough single helix to fill out my job, I found out. They
> don't know the difference. I talked to the guy for fifteen minutes, a couple
> of times, and I couldn't in any way describe what a double helix thread is
> (and I tried EVERY way I could think of). He kept saying "It fits the thread
> gauge", and kept not hearing my attempts at explanations. He also said that
> they send these out all the time to "some of the top rebuilders in the
> country" and never had a complaint. Bull! He wants me to send back all the
> double helix stuff, presumably so their machinist can check them with the
> thread gauge again. As a public service, I spent about an hour this morning
> making a gauge of my own, which I intend to send back with the double helix
> junk. It's a clam shell deal, hinged on one end, with locator pins to align
> everything when it's closed. There's a hole drilled and tapped in from the
> side, so you get half a hole in each half of the clamshell when you open it
> up (like a bullet or sinker mold). When a single helix shank is laid in the
> hole and the gauge is closed, it closes all the way. With a double helix, it
> won't. When they get this gauge, they will no longer have any "reasonable"
> excuse for having the double helix threads in stock, since they will have a
> highly mistake resistant way of determining which is which, and should be
> able to see for themselves what works in a single helix threaded hole and
> what doesn't. I'm telling you this so you'll know that a gauge exists, and
> Schaff will shortly have it in their possession. I also took one of the
> double helix agraffe shaped objects, and glued two different colored sewing
> threads, one in each, into the thread tracks so they can see how the threads
> interleave. It has a certain symmetry, doesn't it? Maybe, just maybe this
> will work.
> 
> Now, your mission, should you care to help, is to contact Schaff with
> requests for replacement, or at least acknowledgement of the problem, of all
> the double helix threaded agraffes you got through the years and were unable
> to use. This action, along with the gauge, will hopefully lend credibility
> to the project and possibly trigger a search for a Lake Zurich machinist who
> knows a thread when he sees one. All of you top rebuilders in this fine
> country must surely have hundreds of them laying around by now if they have
> been shipped in anywhere near the volume the guy at Schaff indicated. Just
> give it a couple of days for the gauge to get there first or you'll just be
> yodeling down the well.
> 
> This is all a totally unnecessary pain in the butt, and I'm going to make an
> attempt to get something done about it.
> 
> PS: Joel Rappaport says APSCO is (just) now stocking direct replacements for
> the old M&H agraffes. That would be 9/32 x 34tpi by my old samples. Only
> about two weeks too late for this project, but something to remember for the
> next one.
> 
> PPS: Tom Cole, thanks for the offer of your old take-outs, but I have some
> of my own now. And no, you still can't throw yours away. Sorry.
> 
>  Ron

Okay, Ron, back in the vault they go.

Very civic-minded of you to go to all this trouble making the gauge and
putting thread in the threads to illustrate the problem. 

I can't remember what I did with those double-helix ASOs but if I find
them, I'll ship them off to Schaff next week with my compliments.

Tom

-- 
Thomas A. Cole, RPT
Santa Cruz, CA
mailto:tcole@cruzio.com