String Winding, WAS: Unwrapped ends of bass strings

[Bill Ballard]

At 12:45 AM +0100 10/2/01, John Delacour wrote:
>Exact marking requires no gift, just proper care and attention to 
>detail.  It is a separate process from >the winding, which certainly 
>requires the same, plus experience and the "knack", which is gained 
>by >constant keeping of oneself up to the mark.  The proper 
>tightness of the copper cover is measurable by >the reduction in 
>diameter occasioned by the degree of tension applied to the cover. 
>A new string-maker >needs to be monitored very closely. Core x + 
>cover y should give o/d z.  If he/she is getting a smaller >o/d, 
>then the pull is too much and too great a diameter means the winding 
>is too loosely applied.  Even >an experienced operative can for one 
>reason or another veer off the ideal, though not significantly, 
>and >needs to make regular spot checks of the evenness and tightness 
>of his covers. An experience operative will not vary during the 
>course of making a set or even during the course of a day, but 
>a >general error can creep in over a period, rarely enough to affect 
>quality.  Illness or weakness due to age >can, of course, deprive 
>the stringmaker of the necessary strength to apply correct tension 
>manually.  >Semi-automatic tensioning is possible and can be very 
>exact, but there is no advantage if skilled >operatives are 
>available.


Thank you for that wonderful guided tour. I've always been curious 
about that core wires tension during the winding. Is that an easy 
matter to set quickly and reliably during the string winding? I have 
no idea how any string winding could know what the tension of a given 
string on his the, once this string is back in the piano and up to 
pitch. So there's probably not reason to expect that any wire the 
winder might fasten to the lathe would have its tension relative to 
eventual tensions in the finished piano. I know why a wire in the 
lathe needs some tension. But how critical are small amounts of 
tension when loading the core wire into the lathe.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"No one builds the *perfect* piano, you can only remove the obstacles 
to that perfection during the building."
     ...........LaRoy Edwards, Yamaha International Corp
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