Setting the plate

[Mike and Jane Spalding]

Clark,

You can usually see, with a mirror and flashlight, whether the plate is seated on each of the dowels.  Shine the light down between the rim and the plate, just behind the dowels.  With an angled dentist's mirror, look at the dowel/plate from the nearest cooling hole.  If there is a gap between the top of the dowel and the plate, you will see the light shining through.  It's not too hard to visually determine the size of shim required to bring the low ones into contact.  anything less than .010" can usually be safely ignored.   Of course, if you decide the existing plate height needs to be altered, the process gets more complicated: you'll be subracting the gap you see from the amount that the plate is to be lowered in that area.  Clear as mud?

hope this helps,

Mike Spalding, RPT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Clark A Sprague <clarks11628@juno.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 10:26 PM
Subject: Setting the plate


> List,  I have been working on my beloved Baldwin R for a long time now. 
> I can only spend a couple hours a night on it, as my store job keeps me
> busy 8-10+ hours per day, but I hope to finish it in this lifetime (
> hopefully sometime this fall).
>         I am to the point of setting the plate, and tonight I got out my
> trusty dial calipers, and measured the dowels.  To my amazement, I got
> readings that were all over the place.  As much as .020 difference in the
> dowels of the same pair.  Is this normal?  Should I attempt to take them
> down, as I read in the article in the Journal reprints, or should I take
> them off and use the Baldwin Plate Suspension system, as also described
> in the Reprints?          
>         I know that there is minimal crown in the old board, and one
> technician looked at it with me the other day, and said that he would
> take them all down the thickness of a penny, but no more than a nickel. 
> I think I would like to be a bit more exacting than that! But then
> again............
>        There are no plate bosses on this one, the bottom surface of the
> plate is flat, and probably not very regular in thickness from one side
> of the hole to the other.  Could this explain why there are differences
> of dowel length in the same pair,  they just made sure that the plate
> rested evenly on all of them?  Or just not exacting in their methods back
> in 1943?
>         Opinions, advice all? 
> 
> Clark Sprague  
>