Baldwin SD-10

[Charles E Faulk]

Phil,

The Baldwin SD-10 is a good quality piano. However it bears many of
Harold Conklin's design quirks.

Capping the bridge may not prove harmful to the piano, but it would be
just a good to repair the cracks with epoxy and move on.

The soundboard was designed to leave it approximately 5/8" short of the
outer rim all along the perimeter. The rationale, if I remember
correctly, was to give the sound board room for expansion or contraction
depending on the season. There is no 'channel' per se; just a gap between
the soundboard and the outer rim.

The bridge pins are supposed to be 17 degrees off of perpendicular.
Considering that these are drilled by hand, there is plenty of room for
mistakes.

The notches are routed into the inner rim using  a 1 1/14" rounded
cutting bit with an unusually long shank. The ribs are supposed to have a
little clearance from the top of the inner rim. They are designed to
'float' to the edge of the soundboard without contact with the rim.

My memory of such things is about 14 years old, but that's about the best
I can describe it.

Regards,

Charles Faulk RPT

On Thu, 06 Sep 2001 00:30:14  0000 "Phillip L Ford" <fordpiano@lycos.com>
writes:
>      I am currently rebuilding a 1982 SD-10.  I have never rebuilt 
> one before
> and have tuned or serviced only a few.  This one has fairly bad 
> bridge
> cracks in the top section of the long bridge and in the unichord 
> section
> of the bass bridge.  One of the other pianos that I've serviced also 
> had
> this problem although not as severe.  Is this typical of these 
> pianos?
> Although the bridge is vertically laminated with no cap I'm planning 
> to
> put on a cap to deal with the cracking problem?  Does anyone have 
> any
> comments about putting a cap on a bridge like this?
>      A few other observations:
>   The angle of the bridge pins coming out of the bridges seems quite 
> severe
> to me and is I assume part of the reason for the bridge cracking.
>   The soundboard does not come all the way to the outer rim.  There 
> is a
> groove or channel between the soundboard and the outer rim that goes
> down to the inner rim.  It appears to have been cut after the 
> soundboard
> was installed.  Does anyone know the reason for this?
>   Looking down into the groove one can see the ends of the relief 
> cuts
> where the ribs are let in to the inner rim.  The ends of these cuts 
> are
> rounded as if they were cut with a router or mill.  The ends of the 
> ribs
> are squared and do not come all the way to the end of the relief 
> cuts.
> I had always assumed that good quality pianos were built with the 
> ribs
> closely fitted to their relief pockets and soundboards always ending 
> at
> the outer rim, but apparently this is not always the case.
> 
> Phil
> 
> ---
> Phillip Ford
> Piano Service & Restoration
> 1777 Yosemite Ave
> San Francisco, CA  94124
> 
> 
> Get 250 color business cards for FREE!
> http://businesscards.lycos.com/vp/fastpath/

________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.