Rob Your email was a bit confusing. You talk in the last paragraph about not wanting to take the hammer butt out of the piano, but show a picture of it out of the piano. If it is already out and the shank has broken at the top of the butt, then your question on installing the hammer butt back in the piano is a mute point (you decided on that when you pulled it out) and you have all the measurements that you need for the repair at hand. Having gotten the butt out of the piano for the picture, you know about detaching the lifter rods on the keys on the broken butt and those on either side to get to the butt screw. 1. First remove the broken shank from the butt as per your idea and/or suggestions from the list. 2. Dry fit a hammer shank in the butt using what ever method you use to put in a glue relief. 3. Check the length of the old hammer shank by holding the hammerhead next to the neighboring hammer in the piano to see if the shank comes to the top of the neighboring hammer butt. If it does, it did break at the top of the butt, if it doesn't, eye the amount of shank needed to reach the butt and remember that distance. 4. Remove the broken shank from the hammer head. 5. Place the broken shank next to the new shank that is dry fitted in the butt and lift the old shank up from the butt the distance that you remembered seeing in the piano. Cut the new shank just over this height. 6. With the new shank dry fitted in the butt, use the shank to lower the butt into the action. Us a split end screw driver that grips the screw (Schaff pg.82 #4028) to start the screw and finish driving with a narrow tip screw drive. 7. Remove the shank and put glue into the hole of the butt by using a glue bottle with a long spout, reaching between the lifter rods and/or putting the glue on a flat toothpick and putting it in the hole a small amount at a time and/or putting glue on the bottom of the hammer shank and inserting it in the butt. Either way you do it, you will need to end with the glue on the hammer shank. It doesn't take much glue because there is not much to fill if you have done the repair correctly. If there is not enough glue to form a collar, remove the shank and put more glue on the shank, repeating until you have a good collar. 8. Do all the adjustments needed to make sure that the butt and shank are lined up with the other assemblies around it. 9. Dry fit the hammer head on the shank and check the height. Trim a little with the "dog clipper" type trimmer until the hammer matches its neighbor. Most likely you will be almost perfectly on. 10.Do your regular mode of hammer installation and you should be good to go. I don't see any reason to pull a spinet action for a simple hammer shank replacement like this. Pulling the action means that you have to have an action cradle or some other way to hold the action to be able to work on it. Letting the piano hold the action is much easier. My 4 cents worth for what it is worth. Rex Roseman -----Original Message----- From: Rob McCall [mailto:rob at mccallpiano.com] Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 1:55 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: [pianotech] Broken hammer shank on a Yamaha Spinet Greetings list, I serviced a 1967 Yamaha Spinet today that was in remarkably good condition, except for one small item. The owner's grandson somehow opened the lid a while back and grabbed A#4 by the hammer and broke it off. 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. I've attached a photo of what it currently looks like. The extra glob of glue is from the owner's attempt to use gorilla glue to fix it. He said it worked for about 10 notes and then broke again. I have a new hammer shank I'm going to use. My problem is this... Normally I would glue one end into the hammer butt and then dry fit the hammer so the height matches the neighboring hammers. I would then cut off the excess above the top edge of the hammer. This hammer, though, is not drilled all the way through, so that option is out. (see photo) I could attach the hammer to the shank and then dry fit the butt end, trim as necessary and then glue, but I don't want to attempt to glue the shank in place when it's way down into the drop action. I'm afraid of getting glue on something I don't want way down in the abyss of the action. I could also remove the butt/flange and glue the shank outside of the action once the correct length has been determined and then put it back in, but getting to the flange screw is a royal pain in the... well... hammer butt. It almost takes one of those "cirque du soleil" feats of body twisting to use a thin screwdriver from underneath the keybed, between the stickers, while holding the top part from above the action. So... I'm trying to find an easier way to get the correct length without getting glue all over the place or having to remove and replace the butt flange multiple times. Any ideas, sequences, or tricks? Other than hire an apprentice, that is? :-) Rob McCall McCall Piano Service, LLC Murrieta, CA rob at mccallpiano.com www.mccallpiano.com 951-698-1875 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091011/d83c1878/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC