New Steinway Hamers was---hammer thickness trimming jig

[Carlos Ralon]

This week S&S had a tech seminar in D.C. at the dealers. I spoke with Kent Webb about the thick hammers. My last two sets were not usable without reducing the thickness. Kent said he was unaware of any change in size. He said that S&S restores 300 pianos a year and uses the same hammers we are getting with no problems. Is he not aware, or is he simply ... ... whatever?  Can we not get hammers sliced at the thickness we want them, and avoid the business of sawing or sanding them to the proper size?
Carlos Ralon, RPT Washington D.C. Chapter
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: erwinspiano at aol.com 
  To: pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 6:30 PM
  Subject: New Steinway Hamers was---hammer thickness trimming jig




     The newer Steinway hammers of the past year have been just too wide & if not reduced will hit the adjacent unison string when una corde is applied. & Bills jig works just fine for this. I also remove a good deal of felt, before the tapering to get the diamond shape that I find works well. Out of the box they look huge, like a fighter who may not make the weight at the weigh in, but with the right treatment it's no trouble. As an aside The two sets I've worked with recently had very nice Bacon felt & were not juiced at the factory & were easily prepped to weight. They await final voicing when I get back from rainy Victoria.
    
    Dale


  At 11:48 -0400 24/8/08, Greg Newell wrote: 
   
  >...I have the task of thickness trimming on some prehung hammers >from S&S. The hammers came too thick for the vintage grand I’m >working on as there is not sufficient clearance to allow reliable >individual hammer movement. 
  >Ordinarily I would do this before hanging hammers but since these are 
  >pre-hung …. well I’m a bit stuck. 
   
  You've bought the wrong hammers, which are most likely to be too heavy even if you find a way of planing them down to 10.5 or 11 mm wide. This would mean you'd end up with too heavy an action or too sluggish an action owing to the lead you add to compensate for the over-heavy hammers. Can't you send them back and get the proper lighter hammers for the early models? 
   
  JD 


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