<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; = charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.600" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV> Hammermaker’s corner5.   Ari Isaac.     I haven’t been blind always, I was born with Glaucoma. I had = many surgeries as a child and they did not feel nice, when they poke needles into your = eyes… well, eye surgery in the 1940s was just beginning its long, uphill = saunter out of the dark ages. Many were consigned back to the dark ages for life by = eye specialists with big names who, I’m sure, did their best. When I had my penultimate operation, fixing a retinal detachment from = which, I well knew, I would emerge pretty blind, I sank into a deep depression. = I was, at one point, ready to give up completely. At some point in the midst of = that deep morass something inside me said "no!". I am going to live a normal = life, I’m not going to let blindness have the upper hand, or stop me = from doing whatever I may want to do!. It took five long, difficult years to come to terms with being blind; = walking into things time and again, reaching to pick up some object only to = reach too far or too short and breaking, or dropping the thing, going into a room = full of people and looking to find someone, going into a restaurant and trying = to find a seat... all of which meant having to acknowledge my blindness to myself = and telling myself, no, convincing myself that, inspite of it all I am like = everyone else because while my handicap, condition, whatever one may call it, was = immediately apparent to all – everyone else had their own = handicaps which, while not immediately obvious, were, possibly as limiting (or more so) than = mine. Maybe their limitation was only a severe shiness or some fear preventing = them from reaching their potential – they were still burdened with some = limitation. It was a tuning customer, a wonderful lady I met for two hours, never = again, who made me aware of the fact that people are not interested in = others’ problems. Look at someone who is the ‘life of the party’, = someone who others are attracted to. Does that person not have any problems? Of course they do = but they don’t dwell on those problems. What they project is something = others are attracted to; positive stuff, leaving their problems aside. I mention all of this to point out one difficulty I had to deal with = – not being able to see along with the stubborn persistance I pushed ahead = with to get my project completed. One of the great blessings in my life has been the people who, of all = the ones I’ve met, stick around and become my friends or become close. = These are all remarkable people and it has been my privilege to know and to appreciate = them, probably not enough. I now called on my friend S who introduced me to someone who owned = and ran a welding shop, one that undertook big, complex projects. Dave, the = amiable, bungling English machinist was, I'm afraid, left far behind. My x and I = delved into hammer press literature and decided to modify Alfred Dolge’s = most advance press. I had come to the conclusion that if resilience is to play an = important role in the function of producing tone, it had to be safeguarded = throughout the entire process of making the hammer. All of the presses I’d seen, = not just at Ronson, completely ignored resilience during the process of attaching = the felt to the moldings. The press I was going to build was not going to. The first part to design was the cawl, the former that formed the = radius from the strike point of the hammer to the shoulder. Every time I started to = design some part I was forced, by the process of designing, to think further = about the precise function of the part being designed. How the cawl was to be made = depended on how the hammers were going to function in the piano. It is = my conviction that musical tone (I shall attempt to define later) can be = produced only by a hammer functioning like a combination compression/expansion = spring. The compression spring is the part from strike point to shoulder, the = expansion - from shoulder to secondary fastener, pin, staple etc. The relationship = between the amount of felt pushed down at every point from bass to treble and = the space inside the cawl was critical as was the length of the cawl and the = material from which to have it made. One of the biggest, most difficult tests of my = life was just around the corner. </DIV></BODY></HTML>