-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Negron <ray at ronsenhammer.com>
To: 'Dale Erwin' <erwinspiano at aol.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 15, 2011 8:02 am
Subject: RE: [CAUT] Rinsing lacquer from hammers
I think Jack would be better able to respond to this, as I doubt there are many people who know more about felt than he does.
Up until about 1998 most of our hammers were made from felt we bought from American Felt & Filter Co., so it is probable that Mr. Foreman used that felt. It seems to me that your method of using 8:1, 10:1, 12:1 ratios would have a similar effect as spinning the excess out of the hammer, especially if what he put in originally was 3:1. Is it proven fact or just an accepted theory that lacquer gets into the fiber? Perhaps it gets under the serrations as well as coating the fiber.
Ray Negron- Ronsen Hammer co.
From: Dale Erwin [mailto:erwinspiano at aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2011 12:27 AM
To: ray at ronsenhammer.com
Subject: Fwd: [CAUT] Rinsing lacquer from hammers
Read and respond dude
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: David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>
To: caut at ptg.org
Sent: Mon, Feb 14, 2011 7:43 pm
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Rinsing lacquer from hammers
A tech from this area (Roy Foreman) had a procedure of adding hardener to hammers which involved first dipping the hammers into a lacquer bath and then putting them on a centrifuge of sorts which spun the excess liquid out of the hammer. It left the hammers some more dense but still with some resilience and they never really got to that point where you couldn’t penetrate the hammer with needles. I don’t know what strength solution he used but it worked fairly well. Given the structure of the fibers that we see here in these various photographs one wonders whether this method tended to leave the bulk of the solids content within the fiber and remove the residual content that might collect outside the fibers. BTW he tended to use Ronsen Bacon felt hammers almost exclusively for this procedure, as I recall, but perhaps Ray can comment if he’s reading this. I know they were definitely Ronsen though this was some time ago and I’m not sure what felt was being used at that time.
David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 6:26 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Rinsing lacquer from hammers
On Feb 14, 2011, at 7:04 PM, David Love wrote:
It’s easy to imagine that the lacquer my both get absorbed into the interior of the outer tube and also coat the exterior of the tube. Soaking the hammers in thinner for purposes of extraction might well float the lacquer off the exterior of the fibers but might do less well extracting it from the interior. That would concur with some people’s experience (as Dell said he experienced) that soaking might improves things somewhat but it’s not quite like starting over with a fresh, unadulterated piece of felt.
I certainly don't disagree. The residual lacquer could be bits still left on the surface, or it could be that some of the nitrocellulose penetrates the fibers themselves. I suspect an electromicrograph of treated fibers wouldn't answer the question, though it might show what happens on the surface.
If it penetrates the fibers themselves, it stiffens them from within, rather than just providing a hard and rather brittle coating. Some interesting food for thought, in trying to visualize what is happening when you add hardeners, and when you insert needles into lacquered felt. In either case, the effect is that of making a material that is less dense act similar to one that is more dense, by stiffening its fibers. Up to a point, at least, because when too much material is added, it seems to fill in the gaps between the fibers and create an amalgam that needles can't penetrate. With more mildly treated hammers, the needle goes in readily and seems to "crunch" the fibers apart (it feels and sort of sounds like something glassy coating the fibers is breaking, but it could be crystals within the fibers being shattered).
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them." Coco Chanel
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