Two Remedies to correct a light action

[Stephen Papastephanou]

Some easy to accomplish suggestions to correct a light touch.

1) An easy and quick way to increase the weight of the hammers, is to tape a
large nail with masking tape on top of the shaft, with the head almost
touching the hammer.
I did this on my Bluthner, and increased the weight of the hammers (as
weighed individually with an electronic scale used for mail) from 0.3, to
0.4 ounces.
A smaller nail can be used as this is quite a drastic increase.
The resulting touch was much heavier. However this put a lot of strain on
the repetition spring, changing the touch too much, and because of this I
decided to undo it. The whole process can be done, and undone very quickly,
and the resulting weight increase measured accurately.

2) I elected instead to tape a piece of thin felt (from a sheet with
adhesive backing costing .99/sheet in any crafts store), in the back of each
key, on the damper lever key cushion, (at the point where it raises the
dampers), in a way that the dampers are lifted almost immediately as one
presses the key, thus giving a beautiful firm touch to the action, by using
the weight of the dampers thus increasing the resistance and resulting in a
heavier touch. 

As far as measuring the key resistance with weights, the easiest way to do
it, is to use a small bottle of woman's nail polish that would fit on top of
a key, after weighing it and removing or adding polish to the desired
weight. One can prepare two or more bottles with a premeasured desired
weight.

Stephen Papastephanou
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