[pianotech] Pitch change, etc.

[Ron Nossaman]

Terry Farrell wrote:
> Hi Will,
> 
> That Ron guy who responded to your post has a great POWER notcher - easy 
> for him to say it's not hard to hand-notch! 

But I didn't say that. It *is* hard to notch. I said it's 
doable, but difficult, which is both true and accurate.


>That being said, it may just 
> be my poor notching skills, but I did make up a cap of quarter-sawn 0.5 
> mm laminations early on in my cap building efforts and found it quite 
> difficult to notch. Yes, I could do it, but it sure didn't look very 
> good. Again, maybe it's my lack of notching skill, maybe the 
> quarter-sawn is more difficult to chisel smoothly than flat-sawn - I 
> don't know. No reason for you to not give it a try though.

My poor notching skills (and poor back) is certainly what 
prompted me building the notcher in the first place.


> What I have been doing is building laminating caps with quarter-sawn 1.5 
> mm laminations. I'll usually have about six laminations in a cap. These 
> I find easier to hand notch as you are usually only going through two 
> bonding surfaces or so.

Yes, my first laminated caps were 1.5mm layers, and they are 
much less difficult to notch. They also aren't quite as hard 
and dimensionally stable as veneer, and more time consuming to 
make.


> Do they perform as well as the thinner laminations (stability, clarity, 
> etc.)? I don't know for sure as I have not ever tested side-by-side. 
> They do however seem to work quite well. I also set each bridge pin in 
> epoxy (put epoxy in hole and on pin).

They sure work a lot better than solid maple, and the epoxy in 
the hole when pinning helps too.
Ron N