rebuild / restore concept (Re: advice on action/hammers)

[Clark]

Hi,

Richard wrote:

>> Replacement materials, including hammers, dampers, action parts, and 
>> even suitable strings are usually not available. In the case of very 
>> early pianos which do not incorporate cast-iron frames, and often 
>> have hammers made of laminated leather, both the restorer of 
>> original instruments and the replica builder face considerable 
>> challenges in their pioneering attempts to duplicate the 
>> craftsmanship and the materials of the original builders"

> This paragraph could easily be read as to say something different 
> then....

>> An antique instrument is reduced in importance in direct proportion 
>> to the number of original parts which have been removed. One of the 
>> definitions of the noun "restoration" is "to put back into nearly 
>> or quite the original form.

> Which has a particularily vauge definition open to all kinds of 
> interpretation. In the first case one opens for the possibility of 
> replacement parts... if such are availiable... clearly replacement 
> of any part stands in direct opposition to the second statements 
> statement about origional parts.


Possibly I don't read this the same as you: there are different forms of
replacement, and which scale differently as to the original state of an
instrument. Restoration is deductive, not only authentic materials and
dimensions (and cut) of necessary replacements should be observed but
also the tool marks so as to replicate them approximately by the same
means as originally they were manufactured. Rebuilding is prescriptive -
of scales, stock parts, preferred finishing techniques, action geometry,
etc.; documentation is in scaling files, touchweight worksheets and
invoices.

I think the differences represent two ways of seeing, one sees realized
instruments and the other simply as steps toward the current form. If
this form changes, what then of rebuilt pianos - change them again?

In fact, a customer has a Boardman & Gray documented having been rebuilt
by the same in the 1930s, work including new tuning pins, lacquer
finish, lyre (possibly having removed a Dolce accompana mechanism),
hammers, action parts, dampers and parts of the damper heads
(replacement leather on the damper lever hinges had deteriorated, a good
example of materials differences even while I don't know what the
originals were like). Anyways, even (sadly) modified from original, the
work is a little historic, too.

Regards,


Clark