Creating an action from scratch

[Bill Ballard]

Greetings, David.

At 7:26 PM -0800 11/19/03, David Love wrote:
>Setting up the brackets and making the rails seems like it would be the
>easier part.  The part I'm concerned about is how to establish the key
>doglegs and dimensions and the frame dimensions, layout and height.

Laying out the keyboard is not that hard. (I gather that both the 
keyboard/frame and top action are gone.) You can easily decide what 
"headstick" (the scale stick for the front pins). If you're designing 
from scratch, you might as well use a standard spacing of key fronts, 
such as Steinway or Yamaha. At the far end, the keys have to line up 
with the damper levers.

The "action stick", derived from the lateral spacing of string strike 
points, is what the flange screw and capstan holes are drilled on, so 
you'd better hope that the key flare will allow you to lay the action 
stick on he keyboard at the point where you want to lay the cap line. 
(Otherwise, shanks reps and caps won't align vertically.) Also to 
reduce wear on the key buttons, the balance rail pins should be laid 
out such that, for each key, the balance pin lays on a straight line 
between front pin and the cap.

But Roseland can figure all this out very quickly. The big question 
is how tall the string heights are. Do they resemble modern Steinway, 
or are they 1/2 to 3/4" taller (or more. Tall string heights rob the 
geometric efficiency of the action, and while Steinway figured this 
out pretty quickly, many other famous makers did not.) I would keep 
your action stack low and go for tall hammers (long hammer bore). 
There are tall heels which can be put on any rep (even one which 
already has its own, shorter heel). But go for as much bore length as 
you can slide under the pinblock.

Build yourself an adjustable, one-note action bracket, on which the 
rails can move say, 1/2" x and y. And try to hold the key ratio to 
2:1. Richard Davenport had a real nice one for his "Let's See What 
Happens If" class.

And tell us how you did it when you finish. It'll be exciting to hear.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"May you work on interesting pianos."
     ...........Ancient Chinese Proverb
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