soundboardinstal again

[Ron Nossaman]

>To soundboard installers out there.  Are there any books specifically
>related to soundboard installation/design?

The only thing I know of is Fenner's book. If an English translation was 
available, I'd buy it. I find enough to disagree with in the drawings I've 
seen to be very interested in reading the explanations behind them. Nearly 
everything I've read about soundboards through the years has ranged from 
dubious to mystic to downright wrong. The information Del has provided has 
been the only source I ever found that I would call reliable, rational, 
scientifically valid, practical, and demonstrable in actual pianos.


>I tend to get into projects, and
>find myself immersed in it.  I need to learn all I can.  I'm not interested
>in general repair books. I have them.

Specifics on the properties of wood as an engineering material are more 
informative and useful than the general repair books. Be warned though. 
It's a kit, with conclusions not included. There's a lot of reading, a lot 
of thinking, and a measure of blood between the raw information and the 
weeding out of all the junk we've been taught about soundboards.

I recommend "The Encyclopedia of Wood", AKA "Wood Handbook: Wood as an 
Engineering Material", and "Understanding Wood", by R. Bruce Hoadley. The 
Wood Handbook is available on line as a series of PDFs, but I find the 
actual book to be more to my liking. I've also gotten a lot of mileage out 
of various technical books on engineering mechanics and strength of 
materials. Marks "Mechanical Engineers Handbook" and "Machinery's Handbook" 
have been less handy for soundboards (other than beam deflection and arc 
height formulas), but very handy for some of the other trips into the 
mechanics and physics of things piano.


>  I don't
>have access to his Journal Articles from the late 90's.

You should have. The Journal CDs are worth the price.


>Ron...I know you and Del are like two peas in a pod (I mean that
>affectionately).  Do you have any suggestions?  I know I'll never get better
>at this if I don't ask.

Yes. Get the Journal articles, get the books, and start reading. Learn 
about wood. Get the basic education base from which to judge the things you 
don't know. Depend less on what this guy said and what that guy said and 
more on the science and physics of the materials involved. Keep it as 
simple as possible, and try to understand the basic structural requirements 
before you go off in chase of wave theory and tiny smoke emitting demons - 
which are legion. Try not to form conclusions without facts.

Learn about scaling too, and try to correlate what you see in pianos to 
what you hear. The correlations are there, but you have to work from a 
knowledge base, rather than isolated random belief or "I've been told". 
Understand what you think and have reasons for your opinions and 
conclusions. Distrust your own conclusions and re-explore your thinking 
from other directions constantly. Not eventually, but constantly. What you 
know about what you've always known will and should be in a constant state 
of change as you assimilate new information and experience and update your 
reality. When something doesn't make sense, don't accept is as magic that 
just is. Check your premise and verify your assumptions. There will always 
be things you want to know but don't yet have the  means to know. Keep 
digging and some of these will come. With everything you learn, something 
that didn't have an answer should be closer to being understood. The only 
hope of making this work is to KEEP IT SIMPLE and not try to fit 796 
unsubstantiated rumors and un quantified variables into the equation at 
once. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work, and doesn't apparently ever 
stop.

Ron N