List, I must admit that there are some challenging issues brought up in this forum, but it is a good opportunity for us to step back and take a look at something that is rarely questioned. So when this thread began, I started asking around - I called the Concert department, spoke with engineering, grilled manufacturing, and sought input from restoration. The engineering guys were not much help - they started talking about the resonant properties of aluminum and the flexibility of an all wooden rail. But, they were guessing. Manufacturing did clear up a couple of things - the rails have nothing to do with tone and little to do with touch, aside from representing an improvement over what was available prior to 1869. It was when I got to Restoration and the technicians that I got some valuable input. The technicians were in unanimous agreement that the rosette shape made spacing more time consuming than the alternative, but that nothing they had worked with held regulation better. Granted, this is a biased opinion. Steinway is their livelihood and most of them, but not all, have more experience with Steinways than anything else. Bill Youse, who runs our Restoration department and has worked most of the operations in factory, really put things in perspective. Bill told me stories about the trouble they go through on the bench to get the alignment right, which sometimes entails using a rat-tail file on the flange to get the hammers spaced. Bill also told me about drilling the dowels out of old rails, so that they would not have to re-align a new rail. But then he started to tell me what he liked about our actions: the stability of regulation, the comparative ease of fixing a stripped screw-hole (as opposed to aluminum actions), and the fact that the brass rails are more resistant to climate changes than either aluminum or all wooden rails. Bill left me with a few comments about split rails. He said "90% of the time they're split because some [less than brilliant technician] put oversize screws in, instead of taking the time to fix it right." Finally, I took a look at C.F. Theodore Steinway's original patents for the Grand and Upright Tubular Metallic Action Frame.(We actually do know what he was talking about. In fact he was a very good writer and made his ideas perfectly clear when he set them to paper, which he did prolifically.) The upright patent actually has all the good stuff because it came before the grand patent: "Be it known that I, Christian F. Theodore Steinway... have invented a new and useful Improvement in Piano-Fortes..." - Pretty clear so far. Here's the meat: "In practice I use, by preference, tubular traverses [rails] filled with wood... since metallic tubes, when filled with wood, obtain the required stiffness, and, and the same time, common wood-screws can be used in fastening the various parts of the action to the same. When solid metal traverses are used the holes for receiving the screws have to be bored and tapped, and the screws have to be manufactured expressly for this purpose. The traverses are provided with flanges...which serve to retain the various parts of the action... firmly in position, and prevent them from getting displaced accidentally, and , at the same time, by the flanges the stiffness and strength of the traverses are materially increased." - So we see Theodore's main reasons for the rosette and the tubular frame, all in one paragraph. But keep in mind that the patent was actually for any metallic frame: "By the use of my metallic action-frame the chief causes of derangement inherent to the action... as heretofore constructed, are successfully removed." - He then goes on to list most everything that was wrong with the other actions being built at the time. The whole patent is about two pages long and the grand patent is another two. He discusses changes being made for regulation purposes, talks about a lot things that were never actually used in production, and documents the construction of the frame itself (prior to this the action was not independent of the piano, but different parts of the action frame were securely fastened to the sides, keybed, or keyframe). So, there you have it - why we made them in the first place, and why we like them today. You may have a different preference, and nothing is without fault, but we honestly believe our system works as well as, if not better than, anything else out there. Stephen Dove Steinway & Sons New York
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC