[pianotech] Agraffe abuse

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Ron,

At 09:20 AM 3/8/2012, you wrote:

>When I took the painted agraffes out of a S&S M here in the shop, I 
>found the dreaded flat bottomed shoulders and incompletely threaded 
>stem, but I also found plenty of indications of abuse. I don't know 
>if it happened during the original installation or some time later, 
>but a half dozen of the trichords had obviously been over cranked 
>with a poorly fitting tool.

Sadly, this probably happened during the original installation.

In the bad old days, there wasn't good control over the drilling 
and/or tapping depths of the holes for the agraffes...so that was one 
problem.  The other main part was that the agraffes themselves were 
"run down" with a Yankee-type screwdriver, most of which weren't 
exactly new; and, when the agraffe bottomed against the top of the 
relief in the plate, if the holes were close (but no cigar) to the 
correct alignment, the were simply forced into place instead of being 
backed out, or the relief cut out a bit more (remembering that the 
hole for the stem of the agraffe had already been threaded), or the 
whole line of agraffes re-set so that there was an appropriate curve 
to their installation.

Equally unfortunate is the number of times one finds this improper 
installation duplicated by post-manufacturing technicians.  Quite 
prevalent.  Still, from your photos, these look like the original product.

>I posted these photos here instead of the HL powered site, because 
>this list still works.

Yup.  Understood and appreciated.

Kind regards.

Horace