[pianotech] Shank questions

[David Love]

What section of the piano did you conduct the experiment in: bass, midrange,
treble?  

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com


-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of John Delacour
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 12:43 PM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: [pianotech] Shank questions


I don't recall any recent discussion on the question of hammer shanks 
and would be interested to hear others' experience.  The immediate 
reason for this is that I have just begun an experiment with my 
Brinsmead concert grand.  This now has new specially-made Abel 
'Naturfilz' hammers with walnut cores and is sounding quite terrific 
but I want to spend time getting the ultimate out of it.

In the 1890's Brinsmead fitted a shank made of a wood the colour of 
black walnut, which I have never identified properly, but this piano 
is earlier (ca. 1876) and has 7/32 maple shanks, very well selected. 
On lesser models they were still using cedar at this time.

What I did today was to run a line of glue along the top of the shank 
and glue along the whole length of the shank bamboo kebab stick, 
lashing them together till the glue set.  Before doing this I chose 
two adjacent notes that seemed to me to be sounding so similar as to 
be indistinguishable at first hearing -- of course the ear gets more 
critical as these experiments proceed.

The increased stiffness of the doctored shank was, obviously, quite 
marked, and I will say nothing of the tonal difference I detected, 
first because I want to hear what you think and then I want to go 
forward with the experiment.  Suffice it to say that I did notice an 
interesting difference in the behaviour of the two notes that I had 
originally selected for their similarity.

Now Steinway were using round maple shanks well into the 20th century 
while many other makers were using Herburrger's octagonal pattern, 
also of hard maple.  Nowadays many shanks, at least in Europe, are 
both octagonal and of hornbeam.  Then there is the fashion for the 
oval shanks in the treble, which I have never been convinced was 
anything more than a fad.  Perhaps you have views on this.  Early in 
my career a Dutch technician recommended scalloping the underneath of 
the shanks in the treble, which would render them more flexible 
rather than less.  I have never yet tested his theory, but it would 
be interesting.

I'd like to hear your guess as to the difference my experiment might 
have made, but more importantly I'd like to hear what people have 
experienced more generally with different shank shapes and materials. 
It could be an interesting thread.

I'm writing this to the old list because I see no change in the new 
set-up and find it quite unusable and full of errors.

JD