Maybe, maybe not. I’ve also encountered pre-war Steinway hammers that have been chemically hardened. Memory—though certainly fallible after 30 to 50 years—tells me, however, that by far most of the hammers on the older—pre-war for the most part—Steinway (and other) pianos I encountered during the ‘60s through the ‘70s were not. I am just questioning when the chemical hardener was applied. There seems to be a search for justification taking place of late that centers on an argument that “the factory always [chemically] hardened their hammers; only the chemicals have changed.” I have found no proof, either written or anecdotal, of this. And, after spending a week with Joe Bisceglie at the Steinway factory back in the mid-1970s the impression I left with was that they were now reluctantly adding chemical hardeners because of changes in the hammer felt they were using at the time. My lasting impression has been that this was a relatively recent—and not altogether desirable—thing. It is unfortunate, I think, that such an easy, but ultimately limiting, solution (please forgive me…) to the problem was found in a chemical solution. There were then, and are now, so many ways to create good hammers that do not require the copious amounts of chemical hardeners now advocated by some. ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 620 South Tower Avenue Centralia, Washington 98531 USA del at fandrichpiano.com ddfandrich at gmail.com Phone 360.736.7563 From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Dale Erwin Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2011 7:54 AM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Lacquered hammers For whatever the reason, our experience is different. Dale If one is exposed to enough original sets of pre -war Steinway hammers and tried to get needles into the suckers then the odds are greater that you can't because there too D_ _ _ hard due to lacquer/shellac/or magic crystals. When that solution was applied of course is anybodys guess but it was obviously done for a reason. SO lets extrapolate! ok?Somebody wanted a change in tone. Odd. I’ve been exposed to quite a few pre-war Steinway hammers and have rarely found evidence of chemical hardeners. ddf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110220/c94a3167/attachment.htm>
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