I broke a bolt head off on my Wurly tine

[hammertime]

Not tine, but the thing that you hit to make the note ring. Should I drillit out and retap it or has anyone esuccessfully removed a small bolt like that with an easy-out?

How tight should I make these tines? I was tuning with varying tightness and seems like I better stop..plsu some notes are still out and I am already tight. I was going to usde a chainsaw file to remove solder. Is that okay?

But first, to retap or to easy-out?

[sean]

Chainsaw tuning is a great idea.  Especially if you capture the video and post it for our entertainment.

[matt.musicman]

I'd raise the bridge and
take the buzz out of the low E.

[pianotuner steveo]

An easy out may work.Drilling may cause further problems. These should be hand tightened with a nutdriver.The washer is concave and the hump goes UP. The slight amount you can move the reed forward and back and also slight changes in tightening the bolt can help fine tune the reed when it is close. I have exact bolts for sale (cheap) if you need any. Sorry, I only have a handful of BASS reeds. I have no tenor reeds for sale. (At this time)

[hammertime]

Steve,

My first 20 bass reeds have the solder facing down versus up like the rest of them Just the first twenty are this way. I assume it is to keep the  higher mound of solder from hitting the pickup shield?

[pianotuner steveo]

That is what I assume too. They are all like that except the real early models are all face down.

[pianotuner steveo]

If you try an easy out, get some WD-40 or equivalent around the broken bolt and let is soak. Make sure the oil doesn't short anything out or get onto the hammer felts.

[DocWurly]

I just snapped a reed screw on a 120.  First time ever.    arrrrrrg.

I'm seeing a scary lack of reporting on people successfully recovering a screw from this.  Anything anyone want to offer?  I'll look into easy out.

[pianotuner steveo]

Before buying an easy out, look for a piece of the bolt that may be sticking out that you can grab onto and turn CCW, ( or tap with a screwdriver blade) but you may want to put a LITTLE penetrating oil there first.

[cinnanon]

I remember taking the reedbar off and flipping it upside down. The holes are drilled and tapped through. I took a smaller drill and worked it out the same way it went in.

[DocWurly]

I like cinnamonrolli's idea a lot!  After practicing on a free-standing, nutted, upside-down screw in a vice (which actually managed to move the screw through the nut)  I have drilled a tiny hole about an 1/8 inch into the back/bottom of the broken screw in the removed, upside down reed bar, to which I have affixed a bubble level.  The hole seems quite centered, but I'm a little spooked about going any further.  Having air-blasted the debris out, I'm going to try epoxying the bit in and leaving it overnight.  In the morning I'll reinsert it into the drill and trying to screw it out clockwise (which, of course, is counterclockwise on the top).

If this fails, I'll try slotting the top, but there is not much to work with.

If my goose is cooked, a member of this forum has kindly offered to swap a spare reed bar with me, so I do have a backup plan.  And I have had a super valuable experiential lesson about just how fragile these 1950's era screws can be (as Steve0 has warned about repeatedly).

[DocWurly]

Drilling from behind did not move the screw, nor did my other clever ideas.  It may be time to go to a machinists' shop.

One of the best posts I've seen on this topic is from the yahoo board.  It is strangely hard to find.  I apologize if I am breaking any rules by reposting it.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Wurlitzer_Elec_Piano/conversations/topics/7483?var=1&p=6

From: Robert Kennedy

There are several steps in the escalation of screw extraction. If the
bolt is broken off due to overtightening, it will probably be easy to
get out and hopefully you won't need to go through all these
steps. Here are the steps, in increasing order of difficulty and
increasing order of certainty. All this assumes you can't get purchase
on the fragment with a pair of vise grips to simply screw the fragment
out.

0. If the bolt can be screwed all the way through the material it's
broken off in -- in other words if the bottom of the bolt hole is
open, try a normal drill bit of the appropriate size to drill the
bolt out. Hopefully at some point the drill bit will catch and will
turn the bolt fragment out the bottom of the hole. The size of the
bit should be the appropriate size to pilot a screw extractor
(EZ-out) in case you make it to step 2, below.

1. Use a left-hand drill bit and drill/turn the offending bolt
out. This bit should be the correct size that you would use to
pilot a screw extractor (EZ-out), in case you have to resort to
step 2, below.

** If the threads are locked in the hole by corrosion,
** cross-threading, or some other evil, do not try step 2 because you
** will most likely break the screw extractor in the bolt, making the
** job much harder. Broken screw extractor material is too hard to
** drill out or file off.

2. If you made it to this step, the normal or left-hand drill bit
didn't get the bolt out, but you successfully drilled a hole in the
bolt. Get a screw extractor and extract the bolt. With 99% of bolts
broken due to overtightening, this will do the job because the
threads aren't locked in the hole.

3. OK, so the screw extractor didn't work, but you were wise enough to
give up before it broke. This happened because you felt the bolt
wasn't going to turn before the screw extractor would break. In
this case, you need to pilot a larger drill into the bolt, and it
has to be sized accurately and piloted accurately. You might need a
drill press for this. Drill the bolt out until only the threads of
the bolt are left, without damaging the threads in the base
material. That's where the accuracy comes in. Once you're done
drilling, pick the bolt threads out with a dental pick. You're
done. If you don't feel comfortable trying this at home, you need
to hire a machinist to do it, and s/he will probably require that
the work piece be removed from all the surrounding stuff as much as
possible.

4. OK, so you broke the screw extractor off in the bolt. Remove the
work piece from the piano (or whatever), find a machine shop with a
sinker EDM machine, and get a price quote. Pay the money. That's
the only legitimate way to remove a broken screw extractor. As a
bonus, they will get the bolt out, too, usually without hurting the
original threads in the base piece.

5. OK, so you didn't break the screw extractor, and you tried step 3
but your accuracy wasn't good enough so you wrecked the base
threads. Get a thread insert kit of the appropriate size, drill the
hole with the supplied or recommended drill, and follow the
directions to place the insert in the hole, restoring the threads
to their former (or maybe even better) glory. Machine shops can do
this, too.

That's how you exctract broken screws and bolts.

-- Robert

[DocWurly]

I got the broken screw out of the 120's reed bar, with the help of my instrument-making guru/teacher, who has a drill press.

The screw is a 10-24 gauge.  A call to a machinist friend confirmed that one would normally use a #25 drill ("maybe the slightly smaller #26, to be conservative")if one were retapping such a hole.  I found, though, that the largest drill that would even fit into an unblocked empty reed screw hole was a #26 or 27 (already forgetting!).  We used one drill size smaller than the max that would fit, so it was a #27 or #28.  If I were to do it again, I would probably use the even smaller #29.  It was a little scary.  We nicked some threads on one side, though there was plenty left such that the replacement reed screw is holding fine.  (Had we zapped the threads, the experts say it still would have been salvageable with a thread insert kit, though of course one wants to avoid that.  I don't have any direct experience of this working.)

Had I not previously tried to drill a tiny hole up from underneath, I would have done so, with the bigger gauge, instead of drilling from the top.  My machinist friend said that the small drill size I used is probably why it did not dislodge.  I could have chased the little hole, but I was not convinced of its accuracy, and I didn't want to magnify any offness when there was less room for error.