traveling

[Avery Todd]

Paul and others,

OK. I'm going to attempt this. I've known Pris & Joel for 20 yrs. or so and 
have done
quite a bit of work with them. Paul, as I understand it, you're the closest 
to explaining
her method. One problem though. I've never heard Pris advocate dry hanging the
hammers or hanging every other one and I KNOW she never leaves the old
hammers and shanks on and install every other one.

I've had her glue several sets for me over the years and that isn't the way 
she does it.
Yes, she dry hangs the guides (tightly) but from that point on, they're 
hung consecutively.
Even though they may "look" crooked after gluing, after I do the normal 
traveling, they are
normally very straight and I have very little burning to do .

Her whole point is that it isn't NECESSARY to pre-travel the shanks in 
order to end
up (after normal traveling) with reasonably straight hammers. She does 
check them
and travels any that are grossly out prior to hanging but does not try to 
"fine" travel
the shanks prior to hanging.

This is the whole problem with using a jig to hang hammers. When one does 
that,
one HAS to do a lot of pre-traveling or else there is a LOT of burning to 
do later. I
know. I've bought pre-hung hammers and there is a lot of traveling and 
burning to
do once they are installed, so even though I don't know for a fact, I can only
assume that a jig of some kind is used to do that.

It's very difficult to explain in words and as Pris has told me, to most 
people, it's
very difficult to grasp the concept even in a class. You have to ignore the
"traveling" of the hammer and pay attention to the "air", "light", 
whatever, between
the top and the tail of the hammer when gluing. If that space doesn't 
change when
you lift the hammer with the jack, even though it might LOOK like it's 
glued on
crooked, once it's traveled correctly, it will be straight. If it's glued 
on so it "looks"
straight, as when using a jig, once you do the traveling, the hammers are then
crooked again and you have to do a lot of burning to straighten them up.

Pris isn't saying that pre-traveling isn't a good way to do it, 
necessarily. She's only
saying that it isn't "necessary" because once the hammers are hung, you 
usually
have to go back and do a good bit of traveling anyway. I've tried to use 
the "lines
drawn on a piece of wood" method of pre-traveling but I just have never 
been able
to get it so accurate that I didn't have to go back and spend just about as 
much
time as at the beginning in traveling after the hammers are hung and if I 
can avoid
it, I really hate having to do the same job twice. :-)

I really do understand the method in my mind but I've probably not done a good
job of explaining it in words. Hope this makes a little sense to some.

Avery

P.S. Does E for Effort count? :-)

At 09:57 AM 02/22/01 -0800, you wrote:
>I guess I missed a couple of messages at the beginning of this thread, but
>Pris's method (the one she used doing factory work in Germany) is as 
>follows (to
>the best of my recollection), and ideally involves no squaring/burning, 
>although
>mere mortals may find a bit necessary nonetheless.
>
>1.  Mount the shanks without traveling them.
>2.  Dry hang the hammers, roughly squaring them.
>3.  Glue hang every other hammer, orienting it such that it sweeps the same
>amount of space on either side during its travel between the adjacent hammers.
>The hammer may have to be tilted slightly to do that if its travel is not
>vertical.  What this achieves is an orientation that is perpendicular to the
>axis of travel, though not necessarily vertical until traveling has been done.
>4.  Repeat step 3 for the remaining dry hung hammers.
>5.  Travel the hammers in the normal way by shimming the flanges.
>6.  Square/burn the hammers as needed, although if the other steps have been
>done perfectly, this step will be unnecessary.
>
>When replacing old hammers and shanks, the variation would be as follows 
>(pardon
>the repetition):
>
>1.  Mount every other shank without traveling them, leaving the remaining old
>hammers and shanks in place.
>2.  Glue hang the hammers, orienting them such that each sweeps the same 
>amount
>of space on either side during its travel between the adjacent hammers.  The
>hammer may have to be tilted slightly to do that if its travel is not 
>vertical.
>What this achieves is an orientation that is perpendicular to the axis of
>travel, though not necessarily vertical until traveling has been done.
>3.  Travel the new hammers in the normal way by shimming the flanges.
>4.  Square/burn the hammers as needed, although if the other steps have been
>done perfectly, this step will be unnecessary.
>5.  Repeat the above for replacement of the remaining old hammers.
>
>I am of course leaving out a bunch of detail not particularly relevant to the
>method, but I hope it shows the idea.  As far as I know, Pris never advocated
>burning as a method of traveling, and I agree that such a method does not
>compute.
>
>Paul S. Larudee