Hi everybody.  I can see that it was a mistake putting a question at the
end of a long rambling account of a visit to Denis Condon's, since nobody
replied to it.  Probably most people gave up halfway through.  So here's
the question again.

My son's in-laws have a small upright piano that has a sheared-off
wood screw in the action.  It is the screw that holds the treble-most
damper onto the main action rail.  The piano tuner that broke the screw
told the family that it could never be repaired, so the piano has been
untuned and unused for about eight years.  At least he taped the loose
damper unit to the back of the hammer rest rail so that it isn't lost.

My feeling is that the tuner could see that he might shear off more
screws and backed off before this happened.  But it can't be repaired -
surely that's not true?

The piano was caught in the disastrous Maitland floods in 1955.  It stood
in a couple of feet of water for a few days but immediately thereafter
was thoroughly dried out by a piano tuner - not the screw stripper!  The
keyboard and action never got wet.  I've looked at the bottom of the iron
frame and the strings don't look particularly rusty.  There is
superficial rust on some of the little pins that guide the strings over
the bridge but they are not at all badly rusted.

The only sign that the piano might have been damper than desirable is
that on about six of the treble hammers the felt has peeled off the
underside of the wooden core.  I only discovered that when I pulled the
action out of the piano.  Does this mean a new set of hammers is
necessary?

Does anyone have any other technique for withdrawing badly rusted-in
wood screws besides heating them first with a soldering iron?

I'd be grateful for your comments, MMDers.

John Phillips, from a surprisingly mild Hobart  (13C or 55F today)