Paul: I'd be interested in how you are evaluating these improvements. If you remove a noisy agraffe from a piano to polish and improve it, you are also putting on new strings. How do you separate the one improvement from the other? I did restring the agraffe sections of a piano earlier this year for just this purpose (i.e. there was nothing wrong with the strings, it was the agraffes that needed to be replaced). The improvement was very noticeable though I didn't do anything to the new agraffes. I don't know how I would evaluate the difference between a new agraffe and new-and-highly-refined agraffe. dave David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt at smu.edu From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 10:03 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Polishing Agraffes ... enjoying the discussion! In a message dated 10/1/2009 7:12:46 A.M. Central Daylight Time, rnossaman at cox.net writes: PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com wrote: > Of what detriment are chatter marks parallel to the string, in > real world practically detectable terms? > > They are not parallel to the string, they generally cross the string at > 90 degrees in multiple lines, some deeper than others, but all creating > a cross ridge line to the direction of the string. . I'm just wondering, because every chatter mark I've ever produced with a rotary tool has been parallel to the cutting edges of the tool, which would make it parallel to the string in this case. > If the result produces no detectable penalty, has the sin > occurred? > > This is not the battle of good and evil, folks. This is an audible (to > me and others) improvement in tone quality (measurable I am hoping as we > continue to put together the research). I'd recommend we all (you, Ron, > Fred, Jeff) quit putting up stalking horses until we have data. I'm just trying to get some sensible connection here, not waging war. For instance, you've stated that abrasive cord is a terrible thing because of all the scratches it leaves. These scratches are quite small and as exactly parallel to the string as you could produce, and the cord will somewhat round abrupt changes of contour in the hole. Why is this so terrible? Abrasive cord is extremely difficult to control both in depth of cut and angle. Trying to create a clean radial surface is almost impossible. As I said, I have no problem with its use in emergencies and on the paint in stair balusters. >If the > data are negative or neutral, then clearly a different conclusion might > be reached. But part of the data so far is experiential and > incontrovertible. That it is subjective and not quantifiable yet doesn't > obviate it. If it were a binary condition - sounds wonderful, sounds nasty, (nearly) everyone would agree that polishing agraffes is mandatory. But that's not the case. It's a diminishing returns thing, As I said to Fred... like virtually everything else we do. Being mortal, we don't have infinite time to pursue perfection in every aspect of everything we do. When time is spent making one thing as perfect as possible (by whatever chosen criteria for judgment), at the expense of time that could have been spent making something else less annoying, it's a questionable use of that time. Balance. And in the end, it still comes down to whether the individual considers the result worth the price, not who's right and who's wrong. If the abrasive cord satisfies this guy, and the reamer and quick polish satisfies that guy, neither have done any damage. Quite the opposite, improvement is improvement if indeed it's improvement. If abrasive cord satisfies you, or the reamer, then go for it. I frankly don't care other than if there is additional knowledge to be gained and shared by paying particular attention to elements (even the tiniest) of the vibratory system, then it's worth exploring. Skepticism has notable historical diminishing returns, too. :-) As you say, balance... P Ron N -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091001/74bec4bd/attachment-0001.htm>
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