Steinway V hammers

[A440A@aol.com]

Greetings,
    Inre my recommendation for using 5:1 thinned lacquer and being 
conservative, Dale and Bill have responded with the "other side".   I sorta agree, but 
want to offer a little more of my own rationale.
 
Dale said: 
     Yes,  but on the other hand if the hammers are really too soft the 5 to 
1- 
will not get the hammer felt stiff enough & trying to switch to a thicker 
solution (3-1) solution later will only encounter the blocking effect of the 
first application & the 3-1 to 1 can't get in as far as it needs to go. 
    I rather suggest experimenting on only a few hammers at a time in 
different registers to determine the appropriate remedy. I like to stick a 
single 
needle in various hammers as a probe to get a feel of the inherent stiffness 
or 
lack of it. If you call the mixture wrong on one at least you didn't whole 
sale 
treat em all & then say oops I shoulnda done that!. <<

      By beginning my doping on the shoulders at 9:00 and 3:00, (a full 
eyedropper full on each one), I leave a "V-shaped" area under the string with very 
little lacquer in it.    You can observe this with some colored lacquer on a 
scrap Steinway Hammer.  The wicking effect takes the fluid in farthest in at 
the middle, forming a half-moon shape and usually reaching the core wood right 
at its tip.  When this happens from both sides, the center of the hammer ends 
up drenched, with a graduated amount of hardener rising above it to the contact 
point, ( well soaked at the top of the underfelt and none at all on the 
surface where the string will be contacted).  
   I like to let the hammers get played after this, and often, they will 
begin to develop a brilliance and range.  If the player simply doesn't like the 
softness, or the hammers need more brilliance right off, then I add more lacquer 
from higher up on the shoulder, something like half an eyedropper at 10:30 
and 1:30 positions.  This seems to avoid the "blocking" of the earlier 
application, and usually begins to create much more dramatic results.  It also leaves 
still a little untreated felt at the very surface and this is what I want.  
    The factory method of soaking from the top down can make for a very nice 
sound, (once you needle the crashy sound out of a percentage of hammers thus 
treated).  However, I find that the sound is not durable, and with moderate to 
heavy play, the sound becomes harsh.  When needling the harshness out, I feel 
like I begin to lose tonal range.  


Bill writes: 
<< I remember Frank Hansen (well-known piano tech in the NE for the last 
sixty years) saying that as far as reinforcing hammers, you really 
only had one pass to get it right. Shoulder or crown, you really 
wanted the hardness on the inside instead of the outer layers. After 
the initial pass, further waves of reinforcing wouldn't flow through 
the felt mass as easily, and thus not as far.

So you judged the initial doping based on the sound (and feel) of the 
hammers, and how a limited set of samples (say, 1, 20, 40, 64 and 88) 
would respond to a given strength of lacquer. The more passes you 
have to make, the more the permeability of the felt becomes a factor 
in where the reinforcer ends up or whether it does you any good. >>

    Beginning on the shoulders allows successive treatments to travel inward. 
 It is also easy to dope the sides of the hammer if necessary.   I have, in 
the past, tried using just thinner on the crown, and then adding a heavy 
lacquer mix to the shoulders, thinking that the thinner would prevent the hardener 
from migrating into the zone below the strike point.  It worked, but now I just 
adjust how much to add on the sides in the initial treatment.  
   One thing I have accepted is that the center of the Steinway hammer, right 
above the core wood, must be completely soaked and hard as a rock.  The tonal 
range is  then determined by the condition of the felt above that bottom 30% 
of the hammer. 
Regards,  
Ed Foote RPT 
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html