My guess is that it is not Delignit. It's been a while since I have seen a Seiler, so my eye can't be relied on. But Delignit has the reddish brown coloration of beech (which it is made of) and is characterized by prominent dark glue lines between the lamina. Hence my "butt ugly" characterization of it. Most of the European grands with horizontal laminated bridge caps are white in color and have barely visible glue lines. Species of wood I do not know. Even though Ron says the Delignit bridge capping material is 70 % the densitiy of the pinblock material, I believe that it is still densified, meaning that the lamina are crushed into a smaller thickness along with high heat in the glue up process. My experience with the material thus far is that it is stable and less prone to cracking. I have been using it to make new bass bridge caps for vertical repairs, where it is mostly unseen. Have you used your 9 mm. pinblock grade Delignit cap for such bridge repairs, Ron? If so, what is your experience with it? Will From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Scott Nelson Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 1:09 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Pitch change, etc. Some time ago I inspected a Seiler grand that had beeen traded in. Overall it was in good shape, but I noticed what looked like hairline cracks around the bridge pins. Upon closer inspection, looking down the long bridge from the lower tenor end (with the lid off), I noticed the cap was horizontally laminated, possibly Delignit. Admittedly, this is an isolated example, and I know that other makers, like Schimmel, use some form of horizontal structure as well. What was interesting was under favorable lighting conditions, you could see the horizontal lams statring to split apart and lift at many of the bridge pins, almost as if the pins were leveraging the cap apart where it was weak. I used to think that the laminated structure would be stronger, but apparently the material was yielding in this case. Could this be an example of the Delignit bridge capping material you were referring to? If so, it would seem that your use of veneer or thinner plies with epoxy saturation would indeed be more structurally sound. Scott Nelson --- On Wed, 4/7/10, Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> wrote: From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> Subject: Re: [pianotech] Pitch change, etc. To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 8:32 PM jimialeggio wrote: > I think it would be useful to try and determine if there is any advantage of the various maple epoxy laminations over a delignit cap. > > Do we have any data on this? Not directly, but Delignit ought to make a first rate cap. The stuff sold by Delignit for bridge capping is, I think, not hard and dense enough. It's a little over 70% the density of the pinblock stock, and noticeably less hard. The only real benefits I see to epoxy/veneer laminations over Delignit pinblock stock are that it looks less like plywood because of the grain direction of the laminations, and it's less abrasive to edged tools when you notch. If you want to try a pinblock grade Delignit cap, I have 9mm material. Ron N -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100408/e3dff2b0/attachment.htm>
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