traveling/traveling/ traveling?

[Ron Nossaman]

>Hey, I remember Ron N. writing about bringing the shanks up to vertical to 
>check traveling problems (without hammers).  Ron, want to repeat that stuff?
>
>David I.

Some time back, it occurred to me that I ought to be able to mount the
shanks and flanges on the rail, point all the shanks straight up, and plumb
them with shims. It seemed to me that they ought to then travel pretty
straight through the normal range of motion at a minimum cost in traveling
time and angst. As I recall, it almost worked - but not quite. It didn't
really work because it was based on the assumption that if the shank
bushing lined the center pin up perpendicular to the shank, and the shank
were plumb, the pin would be level and everything would be great. There
proved to be at least a couple of minor holes in the theory when I tried it
out in a real action. One is that the bushings don't necessarily line the
pin up perpendicular with the shank, and another is that the flange
birdseye can be off plane not only up and down (roll), but also fore and
aft (yaw). The thing with traveling is to make them travel as nearly in the
direction you want through the arc of movement they'll describe in use in
the piano, regardless of what happens outside that range. 

I clean the rail, replace the sandpaper, install the already swing tested,
repinned as necessary, and sequentially sorted shanks and flanges with my
trusty power screwdriver, eyeballing alignment with the wippens and
adjacent flanges as I go. I then travel the ends of the sections and every
five or six in between with a square (and mark them so I don't lose track
and do something dumb since I usually do this sort of thing in the evening
in front of the TV and my attention tends to wander occasionally (but you
might have noticed that (what was I saying?))). Then I clip or tape my
parallel lined stick to the end shanks of the sections and travel the rest.
I noticed I wasn't the only one that printed out my own parallel lines to
make the stick, only mine is on a 30mm+ by 2mm stick of maple scrap with
the ruled paper strip taped on with clear packing tape. Keeps it clean. 

Then I hang the hammers and burn in as necessary a couple of days later
when the glue is fully dry. It seems I am either making occasional minor
alignment errors as I hang the hammers, or they move some as the hot hide
glue drys and shrinks. As I hang hammers, I raise each shank through the
range of travel and check the hammer against the square, and relative to
the adjacent hammer, backtracking as necessary to adjust and refine, but I
still find some burn in necessary later. I know some of the cumulative
errors happen because I don't notice them during the process, but I'm
convinced some of the hammers move as the glue dries.


Ron N