<!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 6.00.2800.1106" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Wim,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Check the flange and balancier pinning friction, if too high the amount of rep spring tension needs to be higher to get hammer rise, resulting in the "bobbling" problem.  I'd be afraid that with little or no hammer rise you might run into rep problems or worse, a dead key!</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>David Denison, RPT<BR>Long Island, NY<BR>Nassau Chapter-Piano Technicians Guild</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"Keep It Simple"</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=Wimblees@aol.com href="mailto:Wimblees@aol.com">Wimblees@aol.com</A> </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=Pianotech@PTG.org href="mailto:Pianotech@PTG.org">Pianotech@PTG.org</A> ; <A title=caut@ptg.org href="mailto:caut@ptg.org">caut@ptg.org</A> </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, October 17, 2002 11:55 AM</DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> no more bobble heads</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF">The problem is solved. Whether it is the best way or not, I don't know, but for now I got the hammers checking. Not only that, I even had two of our best students come in and play the piano, and they loved the way it feels. Remember, this is just a practice room piano. But even still, you want to do the best job. <BR><BR>OK, here is what I did. <BR><BR>I rounded the tails, as Kent suggested, and roughed them up. I put an arc on the tail last year, but the end of the tail was square. This at least got the hammers to check with the action out of the piano. But when I put the action back in, I still had problems on medium blows. <BR><BR>I told you about the various shank lengths, most of them being from an 1/8 to a 1/4 inch too long. I discovered that the ones that were checking on softer blows, also had a weaker rep springs. So I reduced the rep springs, to the point where in the last octave of the bass, there was virtually no rise at all. I suspect that because of the extra weight of the longer shanks, the reps springs were too tight, which was causing the hammers to bounce off the balancier, even on the hardest of blows. <BR><BR>Thanks to all of you for all the suggestions. What a great bunch of friends out there. <BR><BR>Wim </FONT></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>