<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Hi Bob My point was simply that if the idea of figuring a scale was to some how evenly compensate for the soundboard / bridge assembly's reaction to climate changes... then it strikes me that this would require a uniform amount of downwards pressure on the board from the string plane over the entire scale. I'm assuming that  wood responds dimensionally  more or less evenly to climatic changes. If said climate change caused a 1 mm change in string deflection for example... then a very uneven change in string tension will result unless the resisting force of the strings to being deflected in the first place was even. This thought was in response to the following quote.  <blockquote> <blockquote>" It is now known from experience that practical equality of tension throughout the instrument tends to prevent changes in the tuning due to variations in the temperature.  When the tension is equal the temperature movements are equal" </blockquote> </blockquote> I still dont see how equality of tension itself will work contribute to an instruments stability in the face of climatic variations. Tho as I said... I am quite the novice when it comes to all that relates to scaling.  I will of course eagerly read the 1999 articles to get a better understanding of your point here below... which strikes me as interesting right off the bat. Cheers RicB Bob Hohf writes: <blockquote>Why would you ever want to set the same downbearing force per unison when the unisons are so unevenly distributed along the length of the bridges? The top two sections of a typical concert grand contain 43% of the strings on 20% of the total bridge length.  A smaller piano may have 46% of the strings on 29% of the bridge.  Setting a uniform downbearing per string will set up a tone-stifling imbalance in the downbearing force along the bridges. For 20+ years I have been setting downbearing on the principle of uniform force per unit of bridge length.  This produces much less force per string in the high treble and much more in the tenor.  I don't measure angles.  In Parts 5 & 6 of "Recapping Bridges" in the 1999 Journal, I present a discussion of downbearing as force, not dimension, and describe a method of setting a more uniform load distribution.  I'm sorry it's too involved to go into detail here.  I know of one other rebuilder besides me who does something along these lines.   Bob Hohf </blockquote> <div class="moz-signature">--</div> </body> </html>