Hi guys and gals.. This action is in for repair. Duysen grand from 1913. The action is manufactured by Lexow of Germany. Action number 566522 Here are some present specs before doing anything. Hammers are severly worn and it plays very heavily and clunky. The hammer bore length and total lengths are 50 / 80 mm treble, and 56 / 86 mm bass. Knuckels are 10mm diameter and 16.8mm from the hammer shank center. Capstans are at 90 degrees from the keys. The action spread is wide.. 5mm at the top and 3mm at the bottom. This has been moved at some time as the indents from the washers on the whippen rail show also these exact differences. I assume this was an attempt to get a lighter touch to the action at some time.. but who knows. Stanwood measurements as is yeild the following. Key 1, 15, 25, 26, 38, 48, 49, 59, 67, 68, 77, 85 SW 11.3 11.5 10.9 10.6 9.5 8.6 8.6 8.1 6.9 7.0 6.5 5.8 WW 18.9 19.3 19.7 19.1 19.5 19.1 19.4 19.1 18.8 19.1 19.5 18.5 FW 21.6 21.3 16.3 19.9 17.1 12.9 10.1 9.8 6.7 1.0 -1.8 0.9 KR .59 .60 .59 .62 .64 .62 .60 .60 .63 .60 .63 .60 UW 30 35 40 35 35 34 35 35 31 33 28 30 DW 69 64 60 60 52 48 48 46 46 43 38 36 As you can see there is little or no friction. This is due to very loose centers no doubt. I checked a few and they averaged about 20 swings. Moving the whippen rail in will probably give a bit heavier UW / DW readings, I will do that tommorrow evening and post the changes. I also noticed the odd numbers on the hammer bore. I will have to bore myself if I am to follow these figures. Somehow or another I had the idea that the knuckle was supposed to be around 10mm from the hammer shank center. I measured a few spares I have laying around and the figure of around 17mm seems about the norm. So I guess thats about right. The KR on this seems very suspect and I expect that this is one of the real culprits here. Moving in the capstan about 10 mm gives readings down around .54 which is more what I would expect as a max ??? or what ??. Doing so would also bring in the WW numbers down to around 17 grams. These would combine to give a Whippen Balance Weight of just above 9 grams which seems to be standard for Standwood schemes. At present it is a bit over 11 grams. I will be changing hammers, knuckles, and centers and correcting the spread amoung other things. The owner has complained about this always being a bit heavy so I want it so be a good deal lighter, without over doing things. My guess is that a BW spec of 38 with a SW ratio of 5.7 might be a good choice... tho admitedly I am guessing at this. Its an old piano with a hint of thining soundwise. Piano is solid tho.. no cracks anywhere to be seen tho I didnt check crown. I have to go out there to get the string height measurements so I can do that at the same time. Looking forward to comments and suggestions. Hope a lot that there will be some interest for all this. -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway
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