[CAUT] glue/hammers

[David Love]

BTW, I'm not convinced of the tonal benefits of any particular glue either
although I did recently run into a piano where the new set of hammers were
glued on with rubber cement.  I guess the idea was that the joint would be
more flexible to withstand the constant pounding.  The biggest problem
seemed to be that the hammers were tending to migrate a randomly off 90
degrees in either direction.  Made for lots of contact intimacy between
adjacent hammers and an interesting tone that was produced when just the
edge of the hammer struck kind of between two strings--yipes!


David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com


-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David
Love
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 3:16 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] glue/hammers

I hadn't thought of beveling that hole for that purpose.  Makes sense
though.  Do you just use a countersink or some such tool or do you taper the
entire hole with a tapered drill?

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com


-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron
Nossaman
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 1:34 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] glue/hammers


It's interesting to me that so many techs are using Titebond's 
Molding glue for hammers. After so many years of hearing sworn 
testimony, often frothing, that a less than glass hard glue 
will kill hammer tone catastrophically, it pleases me to near 
no such negative claims about as soft a glue as this stuff is. 
There's a more plausible smell of reality about it. Alan, I 
suspect the pliability of the glue is at least somewhat 
responsible for the joints' durability under humidity extremes.

I use hot hide, not for any believed magic tonal properties, 
but because I like the stuff and am comfortable working with 
it. Since I started (somewhere around 30 years ago) beveling 
the bore edge before gluing the hammers on, I haven't had a 
loose hammer with it. It seems that scraping the glue off the 
shank with a sharp edged hole in the hammer molding is 
counterproductive to good glue joints. Whooda thought?

If you want a very quick set easy to work cold glue that dries 
crispy hard, try some of WN&G's glue. It's Franklin's Assembly 
65. Also good stuff.

Ron N