Interesting Old Soundboard

[Farrell]

> >>>>>>>>>>Thats really tight,how did you determine the radius>>>>>>>>>>>

I am making a set of cauls of various radius arcs for a soundboard press. I just laid it into the closest matching caul. Being that the back of these ribs were bend (or cut?) concave, it is possible that they were originally formed with much less (or more!) of a radius, and they dried the panel the stein-way and let it go where it would. I was just shocked to see that kind of bend in them.

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Erwinspiano@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: Interesting Old Soundboard


> In a message dated 3/22/2002 6:20:55 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
> mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com writes:
> 
> 
> > Subj:Interesting Old Soundboard 
> > Date:3/22/2002 6:20:55 PM Pacific Standard Time
> > From:<A HREF="mailto:mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com">mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com</A>
> > Reply-to:<A HREF="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A>
> > To:<A HREF="mailto:pianotech@ptg.org">pianotech@ptg.org</A>
> > Sent from the Internet 
> >   Terry
> 
>    >>>..  I've checked out a bunch too. The knabe as far as my observations 
> go is the only upright I've seen with crowned ribs. This is dangerously thin 
> but they obviously had a concept they were working.>>>>>..
>              
> > I yanked the soundboard out of an old (qbout 1890) Knabe upright the other 
> > day. I've been looking at it since then and have started to wonder about 
> > it. Why did they make it the way they did? It is thin. Six millimeters 
> > thick along the long bridge, and thinned to 4.5 mm in the area of the bass 
> > bridge. Is this unusually thin? It had kinda hefty ribs, and quite some arc 
> > to them. After taking the ribs off the board, I see that most of them have 
> > about a 35 to 40-foot radius curve to them.
> >>>>>>>>>>Thats really tight,how did you determine the radius>>>>>>>>>>>
>  Amazingly tight. And they must have been subject to a fair amount of 
> > compression crowning also because the back side of the ribs is curved quite 
> > a bit also, unless of course they cut/plane them that way. I thought all 
> > the old timers used 60-foot arcs?
> 
> >>>>>>>.I'm not sure they gave it much thought>..----Dale
> 
> > 
> > Boy, I can see that one could spend a lot of time on the back of 
> > soundboards getting to know them.
> > 
> > Terry Farrell
> >   
> 
>