Hello MMD.  Since my previous query about the Temponamic control
I have received some very helpful advice about removing the assembly
from MMD subscribers.  The whole thing is now cleaned, polished and
back in the piano.

However, the grub screw that fastens the knob to the rest of the
assembly is fairly obviously not the original.  It is a small
cheese-head screw, but the previous rebuilder filed most of the head
off it, so that the screwdriver slot no longer exists.  On searching
through the can that holds my life-time accumulation of assorted
machine screws, I have found several whose thread fits that of the
aliquot, so I can adapt one of those.

There is another long rod, however, that runs under the keybed from
the Temponamic control to the bass end of the piano, where the motion
is transferred to a vertical rod that in turn connects to the tempo
indicator in the spool box.  When I removed this long rod I made a
mental note to be very careful not to lose the small screw that secures
the long rod to the Temponamic shaft.  Guess what?  The mental note
didn't work.

I have spent some time crawling around the carpet in the room where
the piano is, and the neighbouring rumpus room, with my eye as near
to ground level as I can achieve, with no luck.  Yesterday afternoon
I put in a couple of hours lying under the piano trying an assortment
of screws in the threaded hole on the Temponamic shaft, in the hope
that one might fit.  I got fed up with screws slipping out of my grip,
falling on my chest and bouncing off into more or less inaccessible
regions.  My last resort will be to vacuum the floor, but I'm not very
hopeful.

The hole in the shaft looks as if one of those little Meccano screws
might fit it.  But it's 65 years since I said goodbye to my Meccano
set, when my family emigrated from the U.K. to Australia.  So I can't
try one of those.

John Phillips - in Hobart, Tasmania