Hi Bob Maybe I miss this, but what is the hammer flange height? Historically It seems to be 145 mm off the keybed. I have restored three Ds from the late 1920s early to mid 30s that have measured 142 mm hammer flange center pin heights. String heights were not unusual. I raised the stack 3 mm on each one resulting in a more usual 3 1/4 bass bore and 2 ish tenor treble. I bore for each sections requirements, hence the ish. Other wise my bore would have been way out of spec, like 3 & 3/8 th and 2 & 1/8 th, plus required longer overall length adding more hammer weight. The geometry worked out well. FWIW, and In my opinion, factory bored hammers as opposed to custom bored hammers is often time wishful thinking. Especially, since the string plane height in general seems to be unreliable from age to age and the agraffe section string plane cannot be depended on as it often rises from note 21 to 50 ish often being 3 mm higher. It is also generally higher than the upper two capo sections. All this to say that one can end up with an action that has grossly under or over centering hammers, inconsistent geometry, regulation etc. as a result. The short story is I don't depend on them being at some kind of close infield standard. Inside the ballpark....maybe, but certainly in my experience something quoted as a N.Y factory standard is not something I can depend on in close tolerance work. Know what I mean? Also I am not being overly critical just explaining what I find every day in my real world and how our shop deals with it. Dale S. Erwin www.Erwinspiano.com Custom restoration Ronsen Piano hammers Join the Weickert felt Revolution 209-577-8397 209-985-0990 -----Original Message----- From: Bob Maret <itunepiano at aol.com> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Sun, Feb 13, 2011 2:45 pm Subject: Re: [CAUT] NY hammers/ Hamburg hammers Thanks for the squaring info - I'm working on a pre-hung set of Steinway hammers on a 1992 D right now. I don't think this hammer set was pre-lacquered in the factory, given the amount of juice I've used. This D has a high plate as well. I had shimmed the stack for the old hammers and left the shims in for the time being with the new hammers. The action plays ok, but I'm looking for Shigeru Kawai smooth, and it's not that - yet. I wonder if I should remove the shims from under the stack, and re reg the action, now that I have hammers with a bit more meat on them? After all, it must have worked well when brand new, right? I bedded the frame, set key height and dip per spec and it played like a truck. So I lowered the glides to raise the key height 2mm, re set the dip, and it's markedly better, but not quite there. I can't raise the keys much more or there will be fallboard clearance issues, both at the bottom of the fall, and bottom of the stretcher. Besides, I'm already springing the key frame a bit lowering the glides more than spec. By the way, this action has WNG aluminum capstans, due to heavy touch with the old hammers. Bob Maret UCF -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110213/8df205dc/attachment-0001.htm>
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