Drying pinblock before stringing

[David Love]

Let me understand this.  You have a piece of wood with a hole drilled in
the middle.  You saturate it with water and the wood expands away from the
hole and the hole gets larger.  Now lets drill five holes in a close
pattern.  Saturate the wood with water.  Now the wood expands away from the
hole, except when expanding away from the hole directs the expansion toward
another hole.  The expansion stops short of the adjacent hole and reverses
direction in order that that hole will also get larger.  Doesn't make
sense.  

David Love
davidlovepianos@earthlink.net


> [Original Message]
> From: Ron Nossaman <RNossaman@cox.net>
> To: Pianotech <pianotech@ptg.org>; <davidlovepianos@earthlink.net>
> Date: 2/28/2003 6:19:13 PM
> Subject: Re: Drying pinblock before stringing
>
>
> >The steam swells the wood and the hole gets, yes, smaller!  Did I
> >miss something?
> >
> >David Love
>
>
> Yes - timing. if the rest of the key was the same MC as the that around
the 
> hole, it wouldn't react the same way. The unsaturated wood just beyond
the 
> edge of the hole doesn't expand, so it constrains the wood at the edge of 
> the hole, which has to expand inward, tightening the hole.
>
> Ron N