Re voicing hammers

[antares]

On 15-mei-05, at 13:14, Ric Brekne wrote:

> Hi Andre
>
> My own choice is cellulose lacquer. Its one of the softest, and 
> springiest lacquers available. It always struck me that if one first 
> was too use lacquer, then a lacqure with its own kind of resiliency 
> was a sensible choice. Dries fast, results show themselves in about an 
> hour and cures completely in a day or two (at least in the amounts 
> used in hammer dopping).


Sure, that's why I had no negative opinion about it, other than the 
fact that it dries up fast and is therefor a little harder to carry 
around.
>
> 'some technician' -  has observed that lacquers and other hardning 
> agents tend to coat the fibers of hammer felt making them brittle and 
> essentially destroying their resilent capabitlites. So a chemical that 
> simply causes the fibers to tension up a bit...(shrinking)  without 
> any other affect would perhaps be the ideal.  Havent tried any such 
> thing yet... shying from chemicals as I do, tho I have bumped into a 
> bit of reading on the subject.

All hardeners clot the wool fibers up to a degree. that's why they are 
called hardeners.
I am against them on principle except for the outer extremities of the 
keyboard i.e. the highest notes and the lowest notes.

>
> As for collodium .... grin... you are wrong about its primary benifit 
> Andre !  In reality that is its ability to make all future use of mind 
> expanding drugs totally redundant !! :)


Ah but I like collodium because it does show a result after 1 hr and 
especially for the fact that it is easy to carry around. If I want to 
get high, that makes it all the more attractive as well ... *((: >))) 
la-la-la-la-la....
>
> Oh.... and Terry... yep.. some folks are out there hardening Yamaha 
> hammers.  Usually because they have been devastated by softening 
> agents, over steamed, or just plain needled to death.  Strikes me that 
> in spite of all the ingenious alternative methods our American allies 
> have for doing things differently... too many over there have 
> forgotten, put aside, or otherwise ignored developing and maintaining 
> needling skills.  No reflection on those who can mind you. One 
> striking difference between voicing problems one runs into here in 
> Europe visa vi those in America (based on personal experience) is that 
> in America you find tons of cases of hammers mauled one way or the 
> other by the uninitiated tech. Where as in Europe... the vast majority 
> of voicing problems have their basis simply from a lack of voicing 
> maintainance done.

And in the case of Quentins remark about hammer dope used on Yamaha's :
He indeed means applying some hardener on hammers belonging to a 
CFIII-S, the concert grand which has ..... Wurzen felt.
usually the lowest and highest Wurzen hammers could use some extra 
'spritz', that's the price for less needling and easier needling.

greets


>
> Cheers
> RicB
>
>
>
>
> Andre writes:
>
> /My "weapon of choice" is collodium (or collodion) because it is a 
> natural hardener, mixed with alcohol and ether.
>
> The ether smells badly for a short time, but the advantage of this is 
> that it is easy to apply (with a pipette), easy to take along (in a 
> small glass bottle) as a standard tool case item for the traveling 
> technician, it will stay the way it is (it does not harden out but 
> stays liquid), after 1 hour we get a result and after 1 day the
> stuff has done its work completely/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
>
>
friendly greetings
from
André Oorebeek

www.concertpianoservice.nl

"Where music is no harm can be"