>> I don't have a Baldwin gauge but on the Lowell gauge (at least on the old >> one I have) I believe there are major lines and minor lines. I think >> it's every fourth line that's a major line. Does a bubble reading of >> 1 >> on your chart correspond to 1 minor line on the Lowell gauge? > > The only Lowell gages I've seen are calibrated in 10' increments, or 1/6.. > Baldwin's gage is calibrated in 17' increments, I think, and since the > instructions were in Baldwinese, I sent a conversion chart with > degrees. > If you happen to have a level with different calibration, read the degrees > per line from the Baldwin chart and translate to fit yours. Baldwin's gage > is 0.005" rise per inch per division, Lowell's is 0.003". This is > exactly > why I have been saying since the first piano I strung that degrees is > the > only sensible measure for stating down bearing, and everyone can > convert > to their own personal scale from there. Call it a universal exchange standard. > > Also, my experience is that any similarity found in actual Baldwin > production pianos, to results obtained from these official > instructions, > is purely coincidental. > > Ron N OK. First of all, I looked at the accompanying material with the Lowell gauge. You're correct - 1/6 degree per division, or to quote Mr. Lowell 'For those of you who prefer to think in terms of angles: each division the bubble crosses is equal to 1/6 degree'. I was correct that every fourth division is a major division, so I had assumed that the gauge would be calibrated so that a major division corresponded to 1 degree deflection rather than .6666666 degree. Silly me. Mine is not to reason why, mine is to pay a lot of money for something and then figure how to make do with it. Since I was a bit skeptical at this point I also checked the gauge and found that 6 divisions do indicate a deflection of 1 degree, at least to the extent that one can accurately read a bubble against a line - not exactly micrometer levels of accuracy. Next. I did find the information sent to me by Baldwin Tech Service in December 2000. I have scanned the pages and they are attached here. They are TIFF images (hopefully not a problem - sorry about the image quality, it's a scan of a fax of a poor copy). I think you can see by reading this why I might have imagined that I was supposed to set the bearing as 0.5 degrees to 1.5 degrees. The note says that the Baldwin factory gauge reads 0.5 degrees bearing per division. So, apparently the Baldwin factory gauge is not the same as your Baldwin gauge. On the post you sent out a couple of days ago Baldwin's instructions were to set bearing per divisions on the bubble gauge. Would this be divisions on the factory gauge or on your gauge? You can see on the instructions that they sent me the bearing is set by shim thickness under the rocker gauge, even though the row where this information is located is labeled 'Bubble Deflection'. But the asterisk next to this says to refer to page one 'to translate these thousandths of an inch measurements into bearing degrees and then into bubble divisions'. As you'll notice on page one they seem to think that a shim thickness of .010 inch equates to a 1.0 degree bearing. They also indicate that the rocker gauge (no longer available) has 1 inch between the legs. Since I don't have one of these rocker gauges (no longer available) I can't check to see if this 1 inch dimension is the operative dimension or not. If it is, then according to the math that applies on my planet, a .010 inch shim under one leg would give 0.573 degrees of bearing, not 1.0 degrees of bearing. Now should I use the correct value of 0.573 degrees to determine the bubble divisions, per their instructions on page three, or should I use their imaginary value of 1.0 degrees to determine the bubble divisions? And since I'm using the Lowell gauge, once I've determined the degrees of bearing which seems appropriate, do I use my verified figure of 1/6 degree per division, or the degrees given in their table on page 1, which is 0.3 degrees per division? As an additional check the note at the bottom of page 1 indicates that a Baldwin grand is strung to accommodate (whatever that phrase means) a tension (presumably they mean a down force on the bridge, or bearing force) of approximately 3.5 pounds for a string with 200 lb. linear pull (would that be tension?)? This works out to 1.0 degree of down bearing. I wonder in which part of the scale that applies? What a useless mess. It's little wonder that any similarity between production pianos and these official instructions is purely coincidental. Phil F Phillip Ford Piano Service & Restoration 1777 Yosemite Ave - 130 San Francisco, CA 94124 [.tif files at:] https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/files/attachments/75/94/62/6c/baldwin1.tif https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/files/attachments/27/33/9a/5d/baldwin2.tif https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/files/attachments/26/e4/46/4c/baldwin3.tif https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/files/attachments/fa/22/92/f0/baldwin4.tif [Alternate URLs] http://tinyurl.com/fdqu http://tinyurl.com/fdr0 http://tinyurl.com/fdr3 http://tinyurl.com/fdrd
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