At 4:33 PM -0600 12/11/01, Ron Nossaman wrote: >The guys making their own shims are considerably in the minority and >don't have these limitations, but that still leaves the height >question for them. Yes, and that can be significant. If I'd screwed all the agraffes home on the last Steinway O I did, they'd have been visibly up and down all over the place owing to the irregularity of Steinway's countersinking. > Those milling off the bottoms of the agraffe shoulders for >alignment get the same height question. So what are all you >rebuilders out there doing with those agraffes? The new agraffes we get here for the Steinway have a sharply angled seat so that as you screw them down the brass is crushed and you are supposed get the alignment that way without using shims. American agraffes are different as regards the thread, so maybe it's only the German agraffes that are like this. I inherited a whole load of upright agraffes a long while ago and these have no thread at all. I never used them until last year when I was rebuilding (properly this time) the first piano I ever restored (in 1973). The agraffes were a beautiful tight fit in the threaded plate borings and needed just firmly knocking in and lining up with a fat screwdriver. That's perfect on an upright of course where the shock drives them homewards but wouldn't do for a grand, though an angled grub-screw could make such an arrangement feasible for grands too; but I'm not going to put any thought into it. JD
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