Steinway hammer rail cloth revisited

[Delwin D Fandrich]

Wimblees@AOL.COM wrote:

> After reading the comments about the Steinway hammer rail cloth, I have a
> question.  Several of you substitute sandpaper for the cloth used by
> Steinway.  Why do you do that?  But first, why does Steinway use the cloth?

It makes hammer spacing much easier, holds the shank in position better and
generally seems to be more stable.


> I think the reason they use cloth is to keep the action quieter. Because the
> hammer rail is brass, when the hammer hits the string, the impact will
> resound through the hammer shank flange to the rail. The cloth acts as a
> buffer on that impact.  If you leave the cloth off, or replace it with a hard
> material, even something like sandpaper, the impact will travel through the
> hard material, and reverberate.

The screw acts as a very efficient vibration coupler between the flange and the
rail.

The cloth acts as a cushion to take up the slack as the wood flange expands and
contracts in response to humidity changes helping to prevent the flange screw
from coming loose prematurely.  Since the felt/cloth/whatever compresses at a
non-linear rate it does require that the screws be tightened once or twice soon
after new material is installed, however.  The sandpaper seems to serve the same
function quite nicely plus giving the benefits mentioned above.

Regards,

Del