Bending rims... sideline from Re: Plate Bushings

[Greg Newell]

Brian and list,
    Isn't this how Steinway rims are made?
Greg Newell

Brian Trout wrote:

> A thought came to mind when I was reading about trying to bend the rims on
> those old pianos...
>
> I had to put a new soundboard in an old Knabe a while back.  The soundboard
> sat on and got glued to a very narrow shelf that wasn't much more than 3/8"
> wide around most of the rim.  It was originally constructed in such a way as
> to have a board glued to the inner rim, directly on top of the soundboard,
> sitting there on edge, but bent around the curved portion of the piano from
> nose to treble end of the soundboard.  This ended up being a piece of oak
> about 1 1/4 inches tall and about 1/4" thick.  (This is how it was
> originally constructed, so in rebuilding it, I put it back together in the
> same way.)  The old piece(s) splintered and split apart so badly that there
> was no hope of reusing them, so I cut out some pieces from an old piece of
> oak I had laying in my shop.
>
> One of the little challenges, which you wouldn't really think about until
> you tried to glue this little piece in, was how to bend the little bugger
> around all of those curves, and get the thing glued in place without making
> a mess getting glue all over the place, and still making a good solid wood
> joint.
>
> The original was nailed in, so I figured I'd do the same.  But it took more
> than that to nail a flat board to some pretty radical curves.  So what I did
> was (this was kind of slow, but it's all I had with me at the time...) held
> the strip of wood over an alcohol lamp and bent it, much the same way as we
> might bend a hammer shank.  It worked!  I'd bend a little section at a time,
> until the piece was pretty much the same shape as the inner rim I was trying
> to glue it to.   Once it was all 'burned' into shape, it just laid into it's
> spot like it was cut out that way.  And it didn't make a mess either.
>
> I have no idea whether a whole rim could be pre-bent in some similar fashion
> to facilitate an easy glue up or not.  It was just a thought that came to
> mind.
>
> For what it's worth...
>
> Brian Trout
> Quarryville, PA
> btrout@desupernet.net