grand damper heads

[David Love]

To refinish the heads I built a damper rack which consists of two long
pieces of thin plywood attached on the ends to a base with a small gap
running between them.  This gap is wide enough to insert the damper wires so
the heads sit flat on the parallel pieces of wood.  Set the damper heads as
close to each other as you can without them touching and just spray them.
You may have to mask off the wires on the low tenor dampers where there is
that sharp bend.  There will be a bit of overspray down the sides of the
damper heads but not much.  I just leave it that way.  By putting them very
close together you avoid getting spray on the wires.  I also suggest you
drape piece of newpaper down from the side of the rack to prevent spraying
the lower part of the wire by accident.

David Love
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Meyer" <cmpiano@attbi.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: July 30, 2002 1:35 PM
Subject: grand damper heads


List!  I made a boo boo!

I have a device copied from Joe Scortino to soak off the dampers from the
heads.  It  was made by cutting a piece of two inch pvc tubing  in half
lengthwise.  Then it is assembled in a lazy   "W" so that the wires hang
down the middle and water is added to touch the felt.

It's worked fine except yesterday I forgot and left it overnight.  The felt
sure soaked off, but some of the finish in now coming off.

My question:  Since I will have to strip the tops of these heads and
refinish, could I just spray the whole head (sides and all) black?  Would
that look tacky?  It would be difficult to mask the sides or at least take
extra work.

What do you think?

Thanks

Carl Meyer  Assoc. PTG
Santa Clara, California
cmpiano@attbi.com