This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment Ari Isaac. Hammermaker's corner3. Boyceville NY is a lovely small town, or is it a village, in the = Catskill Mountains. Lots of woods, fresh air and quiet, you hardly know = you've passed through, that's how small it is. Everyone was at lunch by the time we arrived, Dave and I, at Ronson that = day. Marty Negron suggested we go for lunch and look at the plant after. = He told us where we could find a nice place for lunch and we found it = easily. Chicken soup with Matzaballs high up on the everyday menu? I was a bit = surprised. I asked the owner, who was also the waitress about it. She = said she'd worked with a Jewish woman somewhere who'd taught her how to = make chicken soup. I ordered a bowl and when I tasted it I realized at = once that this was not the kind of ordinary chicken soup to soothe the = sniffles, no. This was the kind of chicken soup that restored your sense = of self. The kind that made you know for certain that this world is the = best place to be living in. The very kind of chicken soup God revealed = to king Solomon, the wisest of men who had a thousand wives, one night = at the beginning of king Solomon's reign, along with many other wisdoms = and secrets and God warned Solomon to reveal the recipe to no more than = one hundred and thirty five of his 1000 wives on pain of loosing his = wisdom. Solomon was not in the habit of taking too much notice of what = God instructed. After all, when you're the wisest of men what God says = to do or not loses some of its importance. He knew, though, in his gut, = that this time God was not kidding and he made sure to reveal the recipe = to no more than 135, or was it 137. After making love, that week, to 132 = of the 547 wives currently resident in the harem, just at the moment he = was about to initiate foreplay with the 133d, a country girl whose taste = in these matters he wasn't sure of, king Solomon had a momentary lapse = of memory so he ended up revealing the secret of the chicken soup to two = more wives than God had allowed. What is certain is that those two wives = disappeared from this world very soon after and were condemned to be the = progenitors of semi intelligent life on a another planet in a far off = galaxy. When we came back to Ronson Marty Negron showed me the entire process = and helped me to my first significant realization about hammer making. He showed me the cutting of the felt sheet into strips and the next step = was the pre-pressing of the strips. They were put into a press, dry, no = glue and pressed into the cawl, or the former of the strike point to = shoulder radius of the hammer by a steel ruler as long as the strip of = felt. The strip was left in that press for a few minutes and then taken = out.=20 Something didn't make sense to me at that moment. I had been taught, = like everyone else in the piano business, that hammer felt had to have = resilience. If so, why pre-press it. After the pre-pressing, when I = looked at the strip from its bass or treble end, it was no longer flat = but had been forced into the shape of a letter V. It appeared to me (and = it still does) that whatever resilience there had been in that felt = before - it, or most of it, was gone now. What is certain is that the = press used to, actually, glue up the hammers, can be considerably weaker = once the felt strips are pre-pressed. That energy, the very one not = needed now to finally press the hammers is taken away from producing = tone - that became obvious to me that day at Ronson. I resolved right there and then never to pre-press any felt I was going = to use and to have my felt made with the absolute maximum resilience, = spring, possible to build in. Thinking about the pre-pressing it became obvious to me that, thinking = backwards, pre-pressing to those hammer makers who used this way, made = sense only if it was effective in getting the felt strip to accept and = retain the letter V shape forced onto it by the steel ruler pushing the = felt into the cawl. If the felt those hammer makers ordered was too = springy to retain the V shape pre-pressing would be ineffective, ergo. = pre-pressing meant, and means today since, I believe Steinways, Renner = and a few others continue to pre-press, ordering felt sheets with less = spring. No more than acceptable for the strip to retain the letter V = shape.=20 The presses used to glue up the hammers were very hot, I estimated they = were heated to 180-200F. The hammers, at that time, were left in the = press for 20 minutes. I touched the felt it seemed to me, at that time, = that the density of their strips was fairly uniform from bass to treble, = something didn't quite come together in my head. That something became = the conviction, embodied in the felt I use to make Isaac hammers, that = the hammer-string impact has to match the taughtness of the strings = being struck. In the bass, where the strings aren't very taught, the = hammer needs to, as it were, chase the vibrating string and keep pushing = energy into it so it must be a bit less dense. As the strings become = more taught towards the treble the same, relatively softer hammer will = simply damp the tone completely unless, that is, the felt is denser and = the hammer is harder. Not harder as in inflexible but like a gradually = stiffer spring is harder than a softer spring. The next big step, for me, was now the building of a hammer press and = both felt and hammer cutting equipment.=20 ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/a5/42/5a/ba/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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