shimmed upright action rail; spoons installed wrongly

[Dave Nereson]

    I encountered an old upright action that had the main action rail
shimmed about 3/16" toward the strings with thick front rail punchings.  Why
would a factory or technician do that?  If it was the factory, I would think
they'd just turn the action bolts in another turn or two.  If a technician
did it, maybe it was an attempt to improve the damping (excessive
after-ring), but it didn't work.  I would think that would also upset other
regulation adjustments, namely let-off and damper timing.  I didn't check
because it wasn't til I had it home on the bench that I noticed the shims.

    Another curious thing:  The damper levers in the highest treble section
are mounted to the treble side of their respective wippens (normal) but the
holes for the spoons were on the bass side of the wippen tails!  Thus the
spoons had to be bent way, way to the treble, crossing over and obstructing
the flange screw in order to operate their damper levers.  Then in the very
highest treble section where there are no dampers, the wippens had holes for
spoons on the treble side of the wippen tail.  In other words those highest
wippens could have had spoons installed and would have been correct for the
section below them.  And the ones that did have spoons installed had them on
the wrong side!  It was all I could do to remove and replace wippens because
of the spoons crossing right in front of the screw!  Weird.  Nothing looked
altered or "doctored"; it all appeared original.  (This was a Camp, made by
Estey.  Serial number #14519, according to Pierce, puts it around 1889, but
the action didn't have any other features usually found in actions that old.
It was more like an action from at least 1900 or 1905.)
    --David Nereson, RPT