At 08:31 PM 12/06/1999 +0100, you wrote: > > Hi list, > I broke an old Brussels °1911 upright because it's not possible to make any > monney on the restoration. My question: is it interesting to keep the > sounboard and saw shims out of it to use for further restoration: is it > better to use this older wood for shims than new shims, some tech told me > this older wood is better quality for shims because it's dry and generally > better woodquality than the new availabel ones? Thanks for reply. > Danny Boddin Pianoservice > Ternat Belgium Danny, The old wood has also been under compression for a lot of years and has suffered some accumulated compression set. Actually, I doubt that there is any harm at all in using old soundboard material from one board to shim old soundboard material in another. I doubt that there is any benefit either, but I don't see any harm. The salvageable portions of the old panel will be the planks that haven't failed to the point of cracking, and if the board being repaired still has some crown under string bearing load, and the budget doesn't allow soundboard replacement, then why not? The shim material will be of about the same degree of deterioration as the board being shimmed. Of course, the fact that the board being shimmed *is* being shimmed means that it has deteriorated enough to crack in the first place and is at least somewhat suspect. I have a question though that is more practical than judgmental. If you have a cracked panel that is quarter sawn, and want your shim to have roughly the same grain orientation as the panel, how are you going to cut shims that are both deep enough, and with the proper grain orientation out of an old quarter sawn soundboard panel without laminations? Ron N
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