Keith, You are aware, I hope, that my little piece on the holes in oak was intended to be humor. Weak humor, apparently, but still.. On seeing the photo of the bridge I see that we are not actually looking at oak at all but European beech. Darn-there goes my whole theory on developing the real "Silent Piano." ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 620 South Tower Avenue Centralia, Washington 98531 USA del at fandrichpiano.com ddfandrich at gmail.com Phone 360.736.7563 From: Keith Roberts [mailto:keithspiano at gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 2:04 PM To: Delwin D Fandrich; College and University Technicians Subject: Re: [CAUT] Bridge root material At first I thought it was dim light and yellowing shellac that had confused me. So I sanded it down a little and it looks like Oak to me and my buddy. It is a German Piano and so must be of European origin. But then again, Hemholtz used holes to isolate frequency and project sound directionally. That holes are a sound absorbing medium is not true. They are a heat absorbing as insulation but all insulations do not make great sound barriers. Still, it's probably not as good KR On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Delwin D Fandrich <del at fandrichpiano.com> wrote: From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Keith Roberts Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 9:13 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: [CAUT] Bridge root material I'm redoing an upright. One of those Shimmells that is all plate and the size of a spinet. The bridge root is oak. Now I'm curious about the difference between maple and oak as a bridge root. Your ideas gentlemen, please. Well, let's see.oak is a ring porous wood, is it not? That means it has open pores. Stands to reason, then, that when the sound reaches one of these open pores-a hole in the bridge root, if you will-it will slow down. Indeed, if the bridge root has enough of these open pores the sound might well slow down so much it will simply stop and never get to the soundboard at all. I can see the makings of a whole new "Silent Piano" technology developing here. This would never happen, of course, with a maple bridge root. Here all you would have to worry about is the glue joint between the bridge cap and the bridge root. Oh, yes, and the glue joint between the bridge root and the soundboard. On another note, those pianos have no back posts. The ribs are crowned. I was able to insatll a nicer cutoff bar and added a fish. It actually looks more like a whale. Then I adjusted the rib scale and diaphramed the board. If Mazzigilia had a plane that would cut the sides of the rib down, that would be great. I like tall skinney ribs instead wide flat ones. The boom of the board has very interesting character now. It was BOOM-uh. Now the boom sustain is rich and has an overtone that sounds like the 12th. It leaps into the mix a fraction of a second after the main boom. I'm having too much fun.... I don't suppose you have any pictures of all this? ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 620 South Tower Avenue Centralia, Washington 98531 USA del at fandrichpiano.com ddfandrich at gmail.com Phone 360.736.7563 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20101001/3bba1892/attachment-0001.htm>
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