Rob McCall said: "It's broken very close to the hammer butt, so I plan on using the Spurlock method with the drywall screw, wallpaper paste remover, heat, etc. to remove the remnant still left in the hammer butt." Rob et al, Let's get something correct in regards to this method and where it came from. I came up with that system 10 years before Spurlock ever thought of messing with pianos!! The original system, which was developed for a vandalized Baldwin Hamilton Studio, was not a sheet rock screw, which tends to split things out. It was a 1 1/2" #8 sheet metal screw. First, the shank was cut flush with the top of the butt. A hole was drilled with a 3/32" drill, down the center of the shank. Water filled the drilled hole. Then the sheet metal screw was inserted. Then the sheet metal screw was heated and a shank puller was used to extract the shank stub. For the hammer end, cut away any glue fillet and soak the shank hammer tail with water and extract as usual. The reason Wall Paper Remover was NOT used, was becausue is affects glue integrity, if you glue before it is completely dry, (which takes at least 12 hours!) You already have the hammer and butt out of the piano, so I'd advise you to extract the shank from the butt and re-install it in the piano. It's no big deal to glue a shank into the butt. Then, trim the shank, (dry fit) so that the hammer is the correct alignment with it's neighbors. Swab the hammer head hole with glue, (preferrably cold Hide Glue), and put the hammer back on. Align. If you heat the Cold hide glue with a cup of HOT water, the glue will set up faster, so you won't have to chase the darned thing for very long.<G> I hope this helps. (and clarifies the system origin.<G>) Regards, Joe Joe Garrett, R.P.T. (Oregon) Captain, Tool Police Squares R I -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091010/eeac4814/attachment.htm>
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