Half moon spoons

[Bill Ballard]

At 5:35 AM -0500 12/15/02, Maxpiano@aol.com wrote:
>I can't, but I had an old Steinway upright (cut down, with a mirror) 
>some 25 years ago, that had wooden spoons mortised into the wippen 
>end.  Solid?  Well, not veneered/laminated, but with a hole in the 
>center for the flange screw to pass through.  The piano has since 
>disappeared from my records, so I can't give you any more data than 
>that.

That's the one. It's as solid as the jack, jack post, wipp body and 
flanges: milled out of solid maple and glued to the wipp body during 
the wipp's assembly. The damper timing is adjusted by a fat set screw 
sitting behind the damper lever's "lifter felt". Installing the set 
screw in a set of Tokiwa levers is not a happy retrofit, and it still 
only gets you something which at best, has to be adjusted with the 
action tipped away from the strings. There is no end to the solutions 
for this situation, which a creative piano tech can imagine. But it's 
just one more reason not to mix parts, ie. to toss out the original 
wipps.

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

"May you work on interesting pianos."
     ...........Ancient Chinese Proverb
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