Hello!  A little background --  I'm rebuilding my second player piano,
and this one is a rebuild of my mother's player for Christmas.  As
you all know, _tomorrow_ is Christmas, so it's getting tight.  It's
a Standard action.  I got the pneumatics all recovered, pouches done,
tested the valves, and reassembled all those pieces and retested.

Then I went to hook the wires back onto the pneumatics fingers last
night.  I had removed (and destroyed in removal) all the bottom leather
nuts.  No problem; I had replaced all the leather nuts for the
pneumatics on my Cable Euphona with some nice 4-40 nylon nuts, and they
work great.  I fully expect them to last longer than leather, be easily
removable, and reusable when the time comes.

Then I found the problem: the threaded rods for the Standard action are
not the same size as on the Cable Euphona.  I estimate something like
a 3-30 nut would be required.  I put away my nylon nuts and pulled out
my leather-nut supply only to find that I only had ones that were much
too large in diameter.  While using a leather punch to reduce their
size, and redrilling their holes larger, I kept trying to think of a
long-lasting, easy-to-obtain-day-before-Christmas alternative.

My eyes landed on my hot-melt glue gun, and the now-cooled gobs of glue
under it's tip.  I pushed my finger against the glob, and noted how
stiff it is.  I considered putting a whole bunch of leather-nut-sized
drops of hot glue on a waxed board, and drilling them out when cool,
and trying those.

Then I thought, "why drill?"  I took one of my metal threaded rods off
the wooden finger, and slowly started squirting hot glue on the threads
as I turned it.  By turning at different speeds, and reheating if
necessary, I was able to create a gob that was the same dimensions as a
leather nut.  I dipped it in water to cool it quickly, then unthreaded
it.  I threaded it onto a new rod, and it grips really well.  Not quite
as tight as a leather nut, but it seems tight enough, and it's not as
hard on my fingers to tighten it.

So, my questions are as follows:  How long does hot-melt glue last?
Does it harden with age?  Crack?  And if it does deteriorate with time,
would that length of time be longer than leather nuts?  Longer than
pneumatic cloth?

I figure that this is a safe test, as I'm not making anything more
difficult for a future rebuilder and I can always order the correct
leather nuts if this starts to fail.  Has anyone else tried this
application of hot-melt glue?  Thank you, and Happy Holidays to all!

Bill Mackin, Iowa