Velem hinged wall climber

[Barrie Heaton]

Hi Avery,


Wall climbers were early uprights, some of them were as tall as seven
foot. they had a little stool which came out the bottom of the piano for
the tuner to stand on while he stretch up to the tuning pins.  If you go
to the U.K. piano page the background image is a gentleman tuning a wall
climber.

Velum hinges.  These are the forerunners to centre pined flanges.  The
way they work is you cut a strip of velum approximately 25 mm long 12 mm
wide and it comes approximately 1 mm thick.  Your hammer butt has a
groove cut in to it 1 mm wide 12 mm across or the width of the butt and
approximately 12 to 14 mm deep.  Animal  glue is then placed on the tip
of one end of your velum and inserted in to the groove.  You now take
your flange and repeat the process.  You then have flange and butt
joined together by the piece of velum.  The flange and the butt are both
tapered at the ends to allow movement.  The flange is then glued to the
hammer wrest rail and there you are a free moving hammer ready to play.

The above is a simplified description of a velum hinge and the
measurements quoted are for demonstration purposes only as a lot of the
older pianos using velum were not consistent in their action part
production.  You tend to find good examples of velum hinges in square
pianos I'm sure you have many fine examples of these in your museums.  I
will eventually be putting diagrams of early keyboard playing mechanisms
on the history page when I can find the person who owns the copy right
to
some of the diagrams I have.

Hope this makes some sort of sense.
Take care,

Barrie.




In article <v01530509aeb26aa113a9@[129.7.16.167]>, Avery Todd
<ATodd@UH.EDU> writes
>Hi Barrie,
>
>   For all us uninformed "yanks" what, pray tell, is a velem hinged wall
>climber? Sounds like some kind of ivy. :-)
>
>Avery
>
>> However, if a customer phoned me up tomorrow and asked me to
>>restore her velem hinged wall climber I would difinitely over estimate
>>the cost, as I know what a can of worms some of these pianos can be only
>>having fully restored two Broadwood wall climbers I am not confident
>>enough to give a straightforward estimate.
>
>>Barrie.
>
>_____________________________________
>Avery Todd, RPT
>Moores School of Music
>University of Houston
>713-743-3226
>atodd@uh.edu
>_____________________________________
>
>
>





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Barrie Heaton                                  |  Be Environmentally Friendly
URL: http://www.airtime.co.uk/forte/piano.htm  |  To Your Neighbour
The UK PIano Page                              |
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