On Feb 20, 2011, at 10:35 AM, Fred Sturm wrote: > I'll agree about the feel of the needle, but I don't think it is due > to hardeners. My experience has shown that it is "friction in the > wool" that can be countered by adding lanolin (as explained in a > thread a few months ago. Feeling the wool, it is not that dense, and > doesn't have that characteristic hard feel, rather it feels somewhat > soft and somewhat resilient. But, yes, the needle will barely go in, > and the felt holds it so you can hardly get it back out. After > application of lanolin, it voices like a nice hammer. Just a bit more about judging the condition of existing hammers, whether they have lacquer etc. For the hammers I think Dale is talking about, at least the ones I have experienced (and David Stanwood's description - I'll call them #1), the needle indents the felt when you try to insert it, showing clearly that the felt is not all that dense, nor very stiff as in impregnated with hardener. With lacquer, if a hammer is lightly lacquered (meaning at least up to the amount pre- soaked by Steinway in current production, usually at least a second application as well), a single needle will insert fairly easily to considerable depth, even at the crown. The resistance is "crunchy feeling" as opposed to "abrasive feeling" in the #1 hammers. When hammers are over lacquered, filled with solids or approaching that state, the needle hits a wall. The surface does not dent, and if the needle is driven in, it feels like a sticky sort of resistance, and comes out leaving a nice woodpecker style hole. If you dose the #1 felt with either lanolin dissolved in lacquer thinner or fabric softener in alcohol, needles go in and out quite readily, and the felt feels like a nice, easy to voice hammer. These solutions do nothing to lacquered hammers. Over lacquered hammers are often easy to penetrate when you apply lacquer thinner, when the felt is saturated. This is not the case with #1, as I find them just as resistant to needle penetration when saturated with lacquer thinner or alcohol (I have fooled around quite a bit). That is how I distinguish between lacquered and unlacquered, at any rate, and my conclusion is that even my remaining Steinway hammers from the early 60s have either no lacquer or very little. My guess is that this #1 felt was made from over-scrubbed wool, probably carbonized, removing all the natural lanolin. Or conceivably this happens over time from age and exposure to air pollution. I think this leaves a static electric condition, stiffening the fibers against each other (this explains why fabric softener changes things, as it is a cationic agent, neutralizing static charge). So it may be less dense, but it is naturally stiffer as well. But very difficult to voice. I had given up on the idea of voicing sets of 60s hammer (I still have three, plus other similar older hammers) until I experimented with softener and then lanolin. 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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