red hammers

[Alan Rudolph Zajicek]

On Sat, 17 Feb 1996, Bill Stratton wrote:

> A first timer; a lurker for awhile now.
>
> Recently I tuned an old Kranich & Bach upright (serial #32169).  It was
> interesting to me in that it had red hammers.  Having never seen such,
> it caught my attention. I am wondering if anyone can shed any light on
> this as to how many makers put red hammers in their pianos and why. The
> felt was clearly red before the hammer was made.

I once filed a set of Cable upright hammers with blue reinforcement, and
even with a dust mask on,an hour later when I blew my nose - BLUE SNOT!!!
It scared the heck out of me for a moment.

> Secondly, after several years of using an acetone and plastic key
> mixture to harden hammers, I've decided to try acetone and sanding
> sealer.
This is Wally Brook's method for hammer hardening and I love it.  Making
sure that the bass of the hammer is very hard+resillient, as well as the
area under the strike point, and the tone and volume of the hammers
jumps!  You will probably need to strengthen the shoulders a little too.
Making sure that all loose felt is removed regularly, keeps
the tone from getting fuzzy, and then for a little sparkle, a drop of
acetone+keytop on the strike point is all that's necessary.  The S&S
hammers that I have seen lately respond very well to this treatment, at
least on the stage pianos that I work with.

Al Zajicek