[pianotech] making the Gen-u-whine Steinway

[Ed Foote]

 Will writes: 
>>What the factory does is this:  The rough cut pinblock is glued to the stretcher (cornice in Steinway terms) before the stretcher is then glued to the 2 sides of the rim.  The keybed is glued in place also.  Then the plate is suspended over the rim and lowered over the pinblock.  A mini Johnny bar on the keybed lifts and lowers the plate flange, rubbing it against the front of the pinblock.  Exit the plate, and the fitter grinds away the high spots of graphite that have marked the pinblock.  


 I have watched them do this, several times.  In 1976, we spent an entire day at the factory, and my notes say they made much of the doweling of the cornice and block,together, and into the sides of the case.  An older guy, with a heavy Bronx accent, as I remember, telling us that squareness was critical here, as the joints really needed to be as solid as the case to continue, as much as possible, the integrity of the continuous rim.   
   At that time, and on later visits, the whole front of the block was graphited to start with, and the grinding was done wherever it was polished by the flange.  I have often met techs that believe the solid blackness on the face of the Steinway blocks indicates total contact, who are surprised to find that it actually doesn't, only the shiny parts are in contact, and sometimes there is less contact than expected. 
     The underside of the webbing seemed to have been coated, and the fitter was using a die-grinder to fit it down as the flange mated.  Looked like a pretty inconsistent procedure, to me.  At that time, I saw no pantograph, (other than the duplicator jig they had for fitting soundboards to cases). We also watched an older worker use a 16' long plane and a set of calipers to diaphramitize a  the soundboard of a D. Easy to see why the brand puts a premium on "individuality".   



Ed Foote RPT
http://www.piano-tuners.org/edfoote/index.html

 
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